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LOTZE'S 

Outlines of Philosophy 
hi 

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 



The Editor and Publishers of the Philo- 
sophical ^Outlines" of Lotze return 
thanks for the favorable reception with 
which these volumes have met. They also 
beg leave to announce that this present 
number on " Practical Philosophy" will 
probably be followed in due time by the 
''Outlines of Psychology," the "Out- 
lines of ^Esthetics," and the "Outlines 
of Logic." 



OUTLINES 



OF 



PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 



it- • »•' 



DICTATED PORTIONS 



LECTURES OF HERMANN LOTZE 






TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY 

GEORGE T. LADD 

f 
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN YALE COLLEGE 




BOSTON 

GINN & COMPANY 

1885 



<b^ 



*>§.** 



THE LIBRARY] 

J OF C ONGR ESS) 

WASHINGTON 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by 

GEORGE T. LADD, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



J. S. Cushing & Co., Printers, Boston. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



The second German edition of the * Outlines of 
Practical Philosophy/ from which this translation has 
been prepared, was based upon the Dictate of Lotze's 
lectures as delivered in the Summer-Semester of 
1878. The first German edition had followed the 
form of the Dictate as given in the same course for 
the Summer-Semester of 1880. A comparison of 
the two editions shows that considerable has been 
gained in fulness, and nothing lost in maturity, of 
thought by recurring to the author's earlier treat- 
ment of applied ethics. Moreover, the second edition 
contains two interesting chapters on ' Marriage and 
the Family' (chap, v.), and on 'the Intercourse of 
Men' (chap, vi.), which are not found in the first 
edition. These reasons have seemed to me to justify 
the choice for translation of the Dictate of the date 
of 1878. 

The following pages have the great though some- 
what melancholy claim to interest that they present a 
large proportion of all which remains of Lotze's think- 
ing upon a most important subject. Nothing else 



VI EDITOR S PREFACE. 

more expanded and technically exact is left us to 
take the place of these pages; and, besides a brief 
article on ' the Principles of Ethics ' in Nord und 
Siid, and certain scattered remarks in portions of the 
Mikrokosmus, there is nothing to supplement them. 
Yet the entire philosophical system of their author is 
distinctively, and almost in a unique manner, founded 
upon the ethical idea. So true is this statement, 
that an intelligent apprehension of the specific points 
of view taken by this system — especially as pre- 
sented in its Metaphysic — cannot be gained at all 
without recognition of their ethical character. The 
idea of Value everywhere dominates and makes 
intelligible those conceptions of mechanism with 
which it is the business of all science to deal. But, 
as we are assured (see • Outlines of Metaphysic/ 
p. 151 f.) the morally Good is to be united with 'the 
beautiful' and 'the blessed' into "one complex of all 
that has Value." The sole genuine Reality in the 
world is this Good. And all the mechanism of the 
world of phenomena, whether in the realm of physi- 
cal Things or of finite Mind, exists in order that 
this Highest Good may become for the spirit an 
object of enjoyment. Even those so-called a priori 
or necessary principles with which the Metaphysic 
itself deals, are declared (p. 153) to be only "the 
forms which must be assumed by a world that de- 



EDITOR S PREFACE. Vll 

pends upon the principle of the Good." The Highest 
Good is "the one Real Principle on which the validity 
of the metaphysical axioms in the world depends." 

No student of Lotze, whether favorably or unfavor- 
ably disposed toward his metaphysical tenets, can 
fail to wish, how T ever, that he had left in more com- 
prehensive and definite form his views on theoretical 
and applied ethics. The first three chapters of this 
volume do indeed suggest the answers which the 
author would probably have given to some of those 
questions of theory that are of so much interest and 
so warmly debated. Yet they do little more than 
suggest some of these answers. The chapter on the 
Freedom of the Will seems to me, however, pecu- 
liarly rich in suggestiveness. Indeed it will be 
found, I think, to touch almost every important 
point in that discussion, so old in time, so deep in 
mystery, and so fraught with vexatious misunder- 
standings. This chapter will repay a careful study 
from the various points of view assumed by the 
different parties in the debate of the main inquiry. 

It should be borne in mind by the reader that 
Lotze intends to distinguish the task which he sets 
before himself in this course of lectures from that 
which belongs to the treatment of Morals or Ethics. 
Ethics, as he would understand the term, includes a 
collection of "those general propositions according to 



Vlll EDITOR S PREFACE. 

which the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of the 
disposition is estimated" (see p. 2). Practical Phil- 
osophy, on the other hand, includes, besides these 
general propositions, "the rules of that prudence of 
life which secures the acquisition of different forms 
of outward good." Accordingly a considerable part 
of this volume is devoted to the discussion of mat- 
ters which are customarily treated under the head of 
applied ethics. It is distinctly stated, however, that 
such particular problems are subordinated to those 
primary problems which come up for discussion 
under the titles of Ethical Principles and Moral 
Ideals (chapters i. and ii.). 

It is, of course, inevitable that the difference of 
social and political institutions, which obtains among 
the different highly civilized peoples, should influence 
the discussion of subjects like Marriage, Society, the 
State, etc. The yet more special remarks on topics 
subordinated to these — such as Divorce, Trades 
Unions, Representative Government, etc. — will 
doubtless seem, in certain regards, foreign to the 
customary thoughts of some who read them. But 
they may be of all the more value on that account. 
The precise shaping received by the institutions in 
the midst of which we are living, not infrequently is 
first seen in its true significance when we aim to 
regard it with other and philosophic eyes, as it 



EDITOR S PREFACE. IX 

appears in its particulars amid the world of universal 
ideas. 

I think it will be admitted by all that Lotze shows 
a rare and delicate tact in discerning the weak places 
in the extremes of Rigorism and Eudsemonism in 
morals. How far he himself proposes any middle 
ground of standing, as it were, is another question. 
Probably his treatment of the subject will not be 
thought sufficiently extended and definite to be sat- 
isfactory. It is perhaps somewhat characteristic of 
all his philosophical writings that he conscientiously 
sacrifices the appearance of forming a consistent sys- 
tem, to his love of candor and his desire to regard 
every subject from several points of view. But it is 
just this in large measure which gives his writings 
their value and their charm. 

GEORGE T. LADD. 

x New Haven, June, 1885. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Introduction i 

FIRST PRINCIPAL DIVISION. 

Chapter I. Investigation of Ethical Principles . . 7 

Chapter II. The Simple Moral Ideals 23 

Chapter III. Concerning the Freedom of the Will . . 35 

SECOND PRINCIPAL DIVISION. 

Transition 53 

Chapter IV. Of the Individual Person 58 

Chapter V. Marriage and the Family 67 

Chapter VI. Of the Intercourse of Men . ... 76 

Chapter VII. Of Society 92 

Chapter VIII. Of the State 120 



INTRODUCTION. 



§ 1. The conflict of our needs, in part with the 
course of nature and in part with social conditions ; 
the frustrating of our plans in life ; and, finally, 
regret and the doubt how to escape from our own 
self-condemnation, — such are the inducements which, 
taken together, incite us to inquire : How are we 
to conduct ourselves so as at the same time to 
attain outward good fortune and inward peace ? 

This very inquiry involves the supposition, that 
in spite of the infinitely varied situations in the 
midst of which individuals are placed, there, never- 
theless, exist certain rules for the attainment of 
this object, which admit of being expressed in uni- 
versal form, and which have a universal validity. 

It is the problem of Practical Philosophy to inves- 
tigate these rules, and to combine them into a 
system. On the contrary, the application of them 
to the more special details of life is to be entrusted 
to practical tact, in precisely the same way as, for 
instance, the application of the general laws of 
mechanics to the circumstances of a particular case 
requires individual sagacity and a fortunate knack. 



PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



§ 2. The proper scope of Practical Philosophy, 
therefore, by no means includes merely those gen- 
eral propositions according to which the praise- 
worthiness or blameworthiness of the disposition is 
estimated, and a collection of which would deserve 
the more definite title of Morals or of Ethics. It 
rather comprehends, besides, the rules of that pru- 
dence of life which secures the acquisition of dif- 
ferent forms of outward good. Yet the simple 
observation, that no outward good would satisfy us 
without the inward good of self-approbation, and, 
further, that only the shaping of our own mind, 
and not that of the outward world, stands directly 
within our control, determines at once the subor- 
dinate rank of the particular problems. 

In the first place, those maxims are to be inves- 
tigated by the observance of which our conduct 
acquires an approbation that is independent of all 
consequences. It is only after it has been estab- 
lished how in general one should and must conduct 
one's self, that the problem arises to discover those 
forms of life by means of which the greatest amount 
of external good can be realized in agreement with 
these laws, and at the same time with respect to 
the definite relations of the earthly life of man. 
In reference to this matter, philosophy must, of 
course, confine itself to the task of depicting cer- 



PROBLEMS OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 3 

tain definite ideals. The third problem which still 
remains — namely, the description of that knack by 
which success in realizing those ideals according 
to circumstances, as far as possible, is gained in 
actual life — can only be incidentally introduced, 
while its full solution must be committed to actual 
life. 



First Principal Division. 



First Principal Division. 



CHAPTER I. 

INVESTIGATION OF ETHICAL PRINCIPLES. 

§ 3. The inquiry, " How ought we to conduct 
ourselves ? " may be answered, in the first place, 
by an analysis of the subject of the conduct, that 
is, of our own nature ; and by attempting to deduce 
from this subject the kinds of conduct which cor- 
respond to the true conception of it. 

In the first beginnings of all culture this point 
of view has been prevalent in a very unpropitious 
fashion : indeed, a particular kind of conduct toward 
a second person has been prescribed for each indi- 
vidual, according to his particular position in society ; 
and such conduct might depart very widely from 
that which was due from some third person to a 
fourth. Thus, for example, the freeman had his 
altogether special rights and duties in relation to 
the slave, the friend to the enemy, the member of 
a certain race to the alien. Nothing but the great 
pressure which arose from such a state of affairs, 



8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

turned attention little by little to the fact that 
there must be supreme laws of moral conduct which 
are obligatory upon every person in relation to 
every other. 

We should, accordingly, be compelled to deduce 
the aforesaid laws from the common nature of man. 
But even with this better understanding of the 
case such a problem is not solvable. First of all, 
even if it were solved, it would only bring us to 
an Ethics which would be binding merely upon 
men and not upon spiritual beings of another kind. 
But concerning the supreme laws which are to 
determine our conduct, we cannot concede that 
other laws exist beside them, without working injury 
thereby to the unconditioned worth and majesty 
which we desire them to have. But besides all 
this : even if we at present possessed an accurate 
knowledge of the nature of man, still it would not 
be a matter to take for granted that the problem 
of morals would consist in adhering to this nature, 
and in forwarding by conduct that to which nature 
of itself impels us. As a matter of fact, in the 
course of the history of humanity there have been 
not merely tenets of the school, but ascetic frames 
of mind in certain peoples and ages, which have 
found 'the Ethical,' not in following, but in indus- 
triously striving against all natural impulses, and 



ADHERENCE TO NATURE. 



which have sacrificed all the good things of life to 
this conviction. 

If one forms the purpose to harmonize these 
conflicting opinions, then one readily discovers, 
that those who demand adherence to nature under- 
stand by this ' nature' of man, not merely his actual 
(physical and spiritual) constitution, but also that 
to which his life and the exercise of all his capaci- 
ties ought to lead ; that is to say, by ' nature ' they 
understand the natural destination. Now, however, 
it would be a mere tautology to say, "man ought 
to do that for which he is destined." It would 
rather be required of us to express with complete 
exhaustiveness and indubitable certainty, what this 
destination is. 

In order to do this it would be necessary for us 
to know the supreme end of the entire course of 
the world ; and further to be able accurately to 
fix the position which the human race occupies in 
this plan of the whole, as well as the perform- 
ances which are incumbent upon it on this account : 
finally, it would also be necessary for us — since it 
is always the individual man who is the subject 
of the conduct — to be able to define besides the 
particular place which every individual person occu- 
pies within the human race. 

Now it would follow from what is said above, 



IO PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

that the content of the supreme moral laws could 
be discovered only by means of an immeasurable 
task upon our cognition, — such as we all concede 
to be possible of accomplishment at all by human 
powers, only with a slight approximation. But — 
quite the contrary — it is obvious that fundamental 
ethical laws, if they are to have any value, must 
be immediately obvious and certain to the indi- 
vidual man. That is to say : There must be a 
voice of conscience which gives direction in par- 
ticular cases concerning the praiseworthiness or 
blameworthiness of an action presented before it. 
In what manner these particular actions admit of 
being combined with one another, in order to pro- 
duce a collective condition of humanity which is 
harmoniously inserted in the plan of the world, — 
this may continue to be the object of further scien- 
tific cognition ; but no investigation into this ques- 
tion can even begin until such individual judgments 
of conscience are first established. 

§ 4. Since then we are unable to deduce our 
obligations to certain conduct from our conception 
of the ' subject' of the conduct, we make the 
same attempt with the predicate ; that is to say, 
we endeavor some how or other, starting from the 
conception of conduct as an act, to determine those 
kinds of conduct which are incumbent upon us. 



THE VIEW OF EUDiEMONISM. II 

Now it would in no wise further our pursuit to 
designate the good actions as those which are to 
be performed. For, in general, the conceptions 
of ' good ' and ' bad ' do not themselves admit of 
any definition except one which refers back to 
the statement that the first ought to be performed 
and the other ought not. There is, therefore, 
still need of some completely and immediately 
obvious characteristic by which those actions are 
made known, to the performance of which we are 
obligated. 

Eudaemonism has found such a characteristic in 
the conception of ' pleasure.' Every other end 
may be called in question ; only in relation to 
pleasure or happiness would it be absurd even so 
much as to raise the question, why just this rather 
than its opposite should be realized. In this way 
is pleasure made to appear as the only absolutely 
self-assertory end ; and, consequently, the conduct, 
too, which seeks to fulfil this end, is made to 
appear as the only kind in itself worthy of being 
commended and obligatory. But important as the 
connection of pleasure with the principles of ethics 
•undoubtedly is, it is hardly sufficiently so to put 
in its appearance without further ceremony as 
chief Principle. 

It is only the pleasure of a definite moment 



12 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

which is perfectly obvious to us. On the contrary, 
it is not obvious how, in the connections of the 
present life, our conduct must be shaped so that 
one pleasure will work no detriment to another, 
and the greatest collective sum of possible pleasure 
be realized. He, however, who finds in pleasure 
the principle of conduct in general, must by con- 
sequence direct his efforts towards such greatest 
sum of pleasure. According to this eudaemon- 
istic theory, therefore, the rules of moral conduct 
would have to be discovered by the experience of 
the entire human race, and be handed down by 
tradition as the rules of prudence, the keeping 
of which, in the ordinary course of life, realizes 
on the average the greatest quantity of happiness 
enjoyable. 

It is plain to everybody that such rules as 
those above mentioned would only be rules of 
probability, which would have to admit of excep- 
tions. They would on this account not be in 
accord with the absolute worth which our con- 
science ascribes to the ethical maxims that are 
recognized as such by us ; inasmuch as conscience 
finds the effort to attain pleasure to be in itse]/ 
without blame and natural, but not in the least 
degree meritorious. The rather does it reserve 
this latter ascription of value for other forms of 



THE RIGORISM OF KANT. 1 3 

conduct (still to be sought for), which are not 
determined by the end of personal pleasure. 

§ 5. In complete opposition to the foregoing, it 
has been asserted by rigoristic views (in modern 
times by Kant) that moral conduct has no regard 
whatever to pay to consequences ; that it should 
not at all be defined by means of an object, but 
that its specific nature and value consist simply in 
a formal construction. 

The formula of Kant was as follows : " Act so 
that the maxim (that followed in the choice thou 
hast resolved upon) of thy conduct be adapted for 
universal legislation." On the contrary, it is to be 
observed that this formula not only presupposes a 
work of theoretic interpretation by which in each 
case the definite maxim, in accordance with which 
the resolution is to be apprehended, has first to be 
discovered ; but also that it is altogether an illu- 
sion to believe every regard for resulting conse- 
quences, and for the production of happiness, to 
be excluded by the aforesaid axiom. That is to 
say : if it is of no account whatever just what 
results in case of certain conduct of ours, then 
there is no maxim of any sort which could not 
be set up as a universal law. For example, in 
that case, the maxim that every man take his 



14 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

own is just as well adapted for such a generaliza- 
tion as the other maxim that every man be left 
his own. The first, of course, leads to open dis- 
order and unhappiness ; the other alone leads to 
order and happiness. But such a distinction is 
without significance unless it is conceded as a 
matter of course, that all conduct must be directed 
toward the production of some form of good, and 
of its enjoyment. 

This attempt of Kant, therefore, only proves 
that not even morals of the strictest possible in- 
tention can altogether avoid all connection with 
the dreaded conception of pleasure. 

§ 6. The first of the deficiencies already men- 
tioned — to wit, the abstract and meaningless 
character of the ultimate formula — is avoided by 
Herbart. 

In opposition to the effort at deducing all particu- 
lars from a single principle, — an effort which has a 
certain* limited validity of its own in our theoretic 
cognition of the structure of the world, — Herbart 
advances the view that the ethical axioms, which 
ought to determine the conduct of the individual 
man at the particular moment, must not only be 
immediately obvious and certain, but must also have 
a definite content. What is required, therefore, is 



THE VIEW OF HERBART. 1 5 

to enumerate the simplest elementary relations of 
one will to another ; such as can be propounded in 
general, and such that all the situations of life, in 
which any one may wish to have a rule for his con- 
duct, are to be considered as modifications or com- 
binations of them. Each of these elementary 
relations, Herbart holds, is to be proposed to our 
conscience for its judgment thereupon ; and the 
answer of conscience is to be expected, — an answer, 
which will consist in an unmistakable approval or 
disapproval of this or that definite sort of the will's 
behavior. In this way are a plurality of ethical 
primary judgments, or 'practical ideas/ attained. 
The possibility that a theoretic consideration may 
perhaps succeed in deducing this plurality from a 
single principle, is not denied. But, if it does suc- 
ceed, it is our knowledge merely that has won some- 
thing : the certainty, worth, and obligatory character 
of the practical ideas themselves would have won 
nothing thereby ; and would have lost nothing, if 
this attempt were not to succeed. 

§ 7. Granted that the practical life does not attain 
to a single supreme principle, it is nevertheless other- 
wise with Practical Philosophy, which, as science, can- 
not be satisfied with what suffices as an immediate 
rule for life ; but which also requires to know whether 



l6 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

these rules must indeed hold good as the ultimate 
thing attainable for our inspection, or whether they 
do not rather require supplementing. 

Now it is in itself quite improbable that, in a world 
which we would fain apprehend as a coherent totality, 
the spirits that are summoned to conduct should be 
controlled by a plurality of incoherent supreme com- 
mands. The demand, however, to seek a uniting 
bond for this multiplicity originates from yet another 
quarter. 

That is to say, we cannot accord with Herbart on 
this point, that he assumed certain forms of conduct, 
which in themselves considered, and irrespective of 
all regard for any consequences arising from carrying 
them out, possess an unconditioned value and a force 
incontrovertibly obligatory. If he designates the 
revelations of conscience, which teach us to recog- 
nize these forms, as aesthetic judgments, we must 
define the difference which exists between them and 
ordinary theoretical judgments in a different way 
from that in which he has done it. The aesthetic 
judgments of approbation or disapprobation — such 
as " this pleases " and " that displeases " — are, 
therefore, judgments or propositions merely as to 
their verbal form ; but what is expressed by them is 
in no case an act of thought but a feeling of pleastire 
or displeasure. For it is only through the presence 



CAPACITY FOR FEELING NECESSARY. 1/ 

of these feelings that what we call ' approbation ' 
and ' disapprobation ' is distinguished from the act 
of thought, which is a mere holding something to 
be true or not true. We can therefore say, that 
such aesthetic judgments are in general possible 
only in a spiritual being which has the capacity of 
feeling pleasure and pain. An altogether perfect 
intelligence, which were lacking in this capacity, 
would have no knowledge at all as to what inner 
state could be distinguished by the name of appro- 
bation from the mere holding of something to be 
true. 

We can reach the same conclusion in still another 
way. Let it be assumed that in all the world there 
exist only such beings of bare intelligence as have 
no interest whatever in anything. There is ob- 
viously in such a case no longer any conceivable 
reason why, instead of an existing state a, over 
which no one is rejoiced or troubled, another state 
b would have to be brought to pass by certain con- 
duct, — over which latter state in like manner no one 
would be either rejoiced or troubled. Just as little 
would there be any reason why, instead of b another 
state c or d or any other state you please, might 
not just as well be brought to pass. That is to say, 
in such a world it would be quite incomprehensible 
that there should be definite rules which should 



1 8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

obligate spiritual beings to any one definite form 
of conduct, and forbid them another form. In case 
such laws are to exist, there must be somewhere in 
the world a point from which the one kind of con- 
duct leads to an increase of happiness or pleasure, 
and the other to unhappiness or pain. 

Whatever may be the more intimate mode of the 
still obscure connection between the ethical laws 
and pleasure and pain, this much is at this stage of 
discussion already made certain: — namely, that an 
indissoluble connection exists, and that all talk of 
absolutely obligatory forms of conduct, which should 
have no reference at all to the resulting consequences, 
is perhaps very nobly meant, but is a formal service 
that arises from a complete misunderstanding. 

§ 8. The dread which is commonly cherished with 
respect to every union of pleasure with ethical prin- 
ciples, sometimes leads to the expression : " What 
is good is pleasing because it is in itself good, but 
it is not good because it is pleasing." 

We hold this antithesis to be false. The two 
expressions, 'to be good' and 'to be pleasing/ — 
or similar ones which might be substituted for these, 
— have by no means so different a significance that 
the one could serve as a reason for the other. They 
rather designate exactly one and the same thing. 



NO PLEASURE ABSOLUTELY. 19 

There is nothing at all in the world, which would 
have any value until it has produced some pleasure 
in some being or other capable of enjoyment. 
Everything antecedent to this is naught but an 
indifferent kind of fact, to which a value of its own 
can be ascribed only in an anticipatory way, and 
with reference to some pleasure that is to originate 
from it. 

On the other side, however, it must be considered 
that ' pleasure absolutely' (in the generality with 
which we make use of this term when reflecting 
upon such matters) is nothing at all that could ever 
become actual as a psychological state ; accordingly, 
it is also nothing which could be set up as a goal for 
our conduct in general. Just as there is no 'motion 
absolutely,' but only such or such a motion of defi- 
nite velocity and direction ; and, further, just as we 
do not see ' color in general,' but, only red or green, 
etc.: so there is never any 'pleasure absolutely,' 
which were merely greater or less ; but every actual 
pleasure is besides distinguished qualitatively from 
every other, — just as green is from red, or a major 
chord from a minor chord. 

If the foregoing fact is overlooked and neglected, 
it is in such case natural to keep one's eye merely 
on that of the pleasure which is common to all its 
forms ; to wit, the agreeable impression upon the 



20 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

feeling of the subject who enjoys it. Now, of course, 
our conscience speaks clearly enough with reference 
to this matter; and it condemns the egoism which 
uses up all objects, relations, and events, with a 
complete disregard for their specific content, as 
mere means for satisfying the demand of personal 
well-being, — very much as both common and costly 
materials may be consumed as fuel in order to pro- 
duce from both the same kind of heat. 

If we, on the other hand, consider the observa- 
tions made above, the pleasurable feeling of the 
subject enjoying it can also in turn be regarded as 
the sole means by which the specific value that lies 
in the things, or their peculiar beauty and excel- 
lence, is first brought to its true realization, — as 
light, for example, must illumine things in order 
that their different colors, which they do not have 
in the darkness, may originate. 

§ 9. Thus far we have only endeavored to estab- 
lish the fact, that the aforesaid general and abstract 
pleasure, which might possibly be set up as a goal 
for conduct,. does not exist; and that, on the other 
hand, forms of conduct which should have no rela- 
tion whatever to such a goal, could quite as little 
possess the character of a worth that should obligate 
us. The question now proposes itself, what help 



THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF GOOD. 21 

this consideration can render toward attaining the 
scientific aims of practical philosophy. 

The objection that the conception of pleasure 
is not fitted to be the principle of such philosophy, 
because it would offer no basis for ranking the 
different kinds of good as higher and lower, is a 
very ancient one. Now it is true that, in case 
abstraction is once made of the characteristic con- 
tent of the good enjoyed, and this conception of 
pleasure is, in a one-sided way, made synonymous 
with subjective enjoyment, then merely a difference 
of more or less, and no gradation of the kinds of good 
as qualitatively different, is possible. But, on the 
one hand, it ought to be admitted, that exactly the 
same defect adheres to all the other fundamental 
conceptions of ethics, although deemed of a superior 
order. They too, in truth, admit the possibility of 
different kinds of good ; but in case they come 
under the necessity of having to compare the values 
of these kinds, they too follow other points of view, 
which have no further connection with the aforesaid 
fundamental conceptions. On the other hand, how- 
ever, since we n.ever once forget the characteristic 
content of the different actual forms of pleasure, we 
can leave the different values of pleasure also to be 
immediately revealed to us by the voice of con- 
science, precisely as we learn of its existence in 



22 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

general only from experience ; and it is nothing 
but pedantry to be unwilling to take for granted 
this knowledge from such a source, and demand 
for it instead some origin as a matter of method 
more profound. 

Finally, if the matter were as simple as it now 
appears, we should have no further problem to 
solve ; we should in that case merely have to follow 
this voice of conscience. But it need not be re- 
marked at any length, that this voice speaks unam- 
biguously only with reference to the simple and pure 
relations of one will to another. The most of the 
demands made upon us for any kind of conduct lie, 
on the contrary, in involved relations, which do not 
admit of being brought at once under any one of 
those simple cases, pure and alone, but must rather 
be brought under diverse ones ; they therefore lead 
to a conflict of opposite decisions from conscience. 
In such matters the final decision can never be hit 
upon otherwise than as a result of practical axioms, 
which the conscience itself does not immediately 
possess, but which must be learned from the ex- 
perience of life ; and it is these maxims that specify 
the general conditions which are to be held as 
obligatory, and under which on the whole the great- 
est possible sum of good may be actualized in human 
life. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SIMPLE MORAL IDEALS. 

§ 10. We do not at first enter upon the con- 
sideration of the many forms of enjoyment which 
have already been made possible by our organization 
and its reciprocal action with the external world. 
Excluding this sensuous pleasure, which it is natural 
but not meritorious to strive for, we confine our- 
selves to the investigation of those simple modes 
of conduct that are productive of the finer and 
spiritual pleasure of an unconditioned approbation, 
and that therefore likewise appear as demands which 
the ethical spirit has to satisfy. 

Nor are we able to deduce these modes of con- 
duct with precise logical method ; on the contrary, 
when we analyze the conception of conduct into 
its particular characteristics, we are simply con- 
structing a series of occasions on which we re- 
mind ourselves of the particular utterances of the 
conscience. 

At present we need to distinguish conduct, in the 
precise meaning of the word, from only one other 
conception, — namely, that of action. On doing this 
we find that conduct occurs merely in cases where a 



24 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

conscious idea of what is to be attained thereby forms 
the point of starting for its own actualization ; op- 
posed to this conception is the ' blind ' action of the 
forces of nature. But mere consciousness does not 
suffice ; neither is conduct that process which origi- 
nates byway of necessity from a combination of ideas 
within us in accordance with certain laws, and which 
passes over to the body and there becomes an exter- 
nal motion. On the contrary, we take it for granted 
that the aforesaid ideas also, although they are 
indispensable for the originating of conduct, do not 
themselves produce it ; that they rather only serve as 
motives for the will, which present to it the different 
value of the different possible forms of conduct, but 
commit to the will itself the choice between them. 

The many difficulties, which are involved in the 
above-mentioned thought, we reserve for subsequent 
consideration : for the present we simply assert 
that, to the ordinary view, all conduct is likewise 
free conduct ; and, therefore, that innumerable 
so-called deeds, which we daily accomplish, do 
not belong at all under the conception of conduct. 
The most of our bodily movements, even where 
they have a purpose, — for example, seek to attain 
or to avoid an object, — are nothing more than 
perfectly involuntary secondary effects, that are 
neither produced by a will nor always to be sup- 



THE ORIGIN OF CONDUCT. 25 

pressed by it ; that are attached to our preceding 
states in accordance with physiological or psycho- 
logical laws ; and that, therefore, happen through 
and from us, but are not wrought by us. 

We therefore restrict the term i conduct ' to 
those cases in which an idea of different possible 
modes of conduct, further, an idea of their differ- 
ent value, and, finally, a decision between them, 
have preceded ; the last of which we attribute — 
no matter now whether rightly or wrongly — to the 
free determination of our will. 

§ 11. If we are mindful of the fact that acts called 
1 conduct ' are not to originate from a basis of blind 
action, but from a conscious motive, and, in fact, from 
an estimate of the value of the mode of behavior 
presented before us in idea; then we demand — 

I. Sensibility of the mind to motives and that 
warmth of feeling which, at every moment, enters 
sympathetically into the happiness or unhappiness 
which it either purposes to change by its actions, 
or is by general maxims necessitated to change. 
On the contrary, that incorruptible, perfectly cold, 
machine-like probity, which invariably obeys gen- 
eral laws, without rejoicing at the happiness or 
being troubled by the unhappiness which it pro- 
duces, although it may be in actual life at the 



26 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

right place a very useful thing, is nevertheless in 
itself considered only an object of moral disap- 
probation. 

Three further points in particular must be 
alluded to in order more precisely to define this 
sensibility of mind. 

i. Its intensity will naturally heighten its value. 
But, in addition to the above-mentioned magnitude 
of sensibility, we demand also that it have — 

2. Many-sidedness. In life it may repeatedly 
happen that, with the division of labor, a division 
of susceptibility also occurs to the advantage of the 
general well-being ; since, at all events, one-sided- 
ness frequently brings perfection in relation to that 
for which it furnishes the impulse. But taken by 
itself, every such limitation is morally uncomely- 
for by it our conduct is degraded to a similarity 
with the wonderful artistic impulses of- the ani- 
mals, which are likewise lacking in free activity 
and susceptibility of fancy directed towards all sides. 

3. Finally, we wish the sensibility to be not 
merely many-sided but also proportional to the 
actual value of the things, from which it experi- 
ences the impression : it ought to urge on what 
is great with earnestness, and what is small with 
ease, and not everything with the same solemnity 
and the same inflexibility. 



THE VIRTUE OF RESIGNATION. 2*] 

§ 12. II. Motives, however, should not remain 
mere motives, but should lead to effects upon the 
external world ; for it is this which distinguishes 
the actions called conduct from mere sentiments. 
It is with reference to this fact that we can set 
up in quite universal form the moral precept : 
"Let thy conduct be, etc." — and what is meant 
by it is, that man ought by no means to wait for 
circumstances to compel him to do something or 
other; but he ought with ingenious initiative to 
choose for himself a department in which he can 
by his conduct actualize ' the Goods ' of beauty, hap- 
piness, or righteousness. All merely contemplative 
life needs its special justification in every individ- 
ual case, and can never be preferred, as a rule, to 
active life. Besides, this latter of itself creates 
relations which form a worthy object of contem- 
plation. 

. The general utterance made above may be 
divided into three particulars : 

i. Neither ought conduct to be fruitlessly directed 
toward what is in itself impossible, nor ought a con- 
test to be waged against what is unavoidable. This 
is the thought of Resignation, by which all our 
activity is limited to real and attainable ends. But — 

2. Those plans, the accomplishment of which 
is possible, one ought not merely to cherish as 



28 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

plans, and — as frequently happens — shrink from 
the common toil and pains which alone can lead 
to their realization. This is, in contrast with all 
high-flying extravagance, the demand for that 
Energy which does not despise even the small 
for the sake of what is great. 

3. But, finally, there may be forms of conduct 
which are not merely possible, but which, accord- 
ing to our own conviction, are absolutely com- 
manded. In this case it is demanded that our 
conduct and our will be in accord with our con- 
viction. This is the demand for Conscientiousness, 
— by which however we must signify the right 
thing : in all cases where we know that there are 
diverse convictions, we are in duty bound undis- 
turbed to follow our own, only in case we are 
compelled to act at all. On the contrary, it is a 
pernicious principle of Fanaticism to wish to carry 
through our own convictions even in cases where 
no duty to act lies before us. 

§ 13. III. All conduct must either alter some 
state of a being or thing, or else protect it 
against threatening alteration. With reference to 
this content of conduct, it may be said, — 

1. The piety is everywhere well-pleasing, that 
considerately allows every natural product and 



BENEVOLENCE AND JUSTICE. 29 

every natural event, which occupies or appears 
to occupy the place in the plan of the whole to 
which it is entitled, to be undisturbed and to 
develop itself ; and that even sustains (so far as 
this is possible) the development of such prod- 
uct or event, but never interferes to disturb it 
without being justified in doing this by some spe- 
cial reason. This principle condemns every aim- 
less impulse at destruction even of what is 
inanimate. Such piety naturally attains its larger 
moral value in the relation of spirits to spirits, 
and in this case forms what we call Benevolence. 

2. It may happen that two efforts of different 
spirits, in themselves allowable, encounter each 
other in one and the same object. In that case 
it is agreeable to conscience if neither of the two 
insists on its exclusive gratification, but if both 
so far withdraw as that both may be in part grati- 
fied proportionably. This self -limitation or moder- 
ation is considered by Herbart as the origin of 
Justice. 

3. Finally, Retribution is agreeable to con- 
science ; that is to say, the returning of a cor- 
responding measure of reward or of punishment 
to a will which has occasioned a definite measure 
of weal or woe. It is to be observed, however, 
that while we can very easily deduce from the 



30 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

foregoing the moral duty of gratitude, we cannot, 
on the contrary, by any means so immediately 
deduce our right to execute the punishment itself, 
and to put ourselves in the place of that fate 
which would satisfy us if it undertook the retri- 
bution of itself. 

§ 14. IV. Yet a fourth feature belongs to our 
complete conception of 'conduct.' Concerning the 
animals we concede, indeed, that they ' do ' mani- 
fold things ; but in their case we are not wont to 
speak of acts as ' conduct.' That is to say, we 
assume (no matter whether rightly or wrongly) 
that the animals are always straightway moved 
by the excitation of the instant to a momentary 
activity, and not by maxims which have been 
formed through the elaboration of their expe- 
riences and established as the abiding basis of 
all their actions. In a word : A personality as. a 
subject belongs to 'conduct.' Accordingly — 

i. Consistency is demanded in conduct : only 
that which flows from such a constant character 
— rather than inconsequent ebullitions of fine feel- 
ing — experiences our moral approbation. Then, 
moreover, — 

2. We demand that every single action be not 
at all times dependent on a hazardous struggle 



VALUE OF DIFFERENT IDEALS. 3 1 

between this character and the impulse of the 
moment. Rather does the moral habit, which 
makes the correct conduct seem like a second 
nature, appear to us as a much higher ideal of 
morality and as somewhat toward which, among 
other things, education has to strive. It is this 
to which we also do honor under the name of 
1 Holiness/ even in cases where we can by no 
means assume any earlier antecedent struggle. 
Finally, — 

3. It positively is not a moral command, that 
one person shall be and act precisely like another. 
Rather should each cultivate morally his own pecu- 
liar individual Character, in such manner as thereby 
to produce good things, or himself become such a 
good as no other one in the world may exhibit 
with exactly the same coloring and peculiarities. 

§ 15. The different ideals which we have thus 
far adduced are of different value. 

The first group (§ n) may be designated as 
gifts of nature, over which we rejoice if they 
exist, and the total lack of which would annul 
completely every ethical judgment ; but the inten- 
sity of which cannot be manufactured at will by 
the living spirit, but can only hover before it as 
a goal to be attained. 



32 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

The second group (§ 12) corresponds essen- 
tially to what Herbart brought together under 
the title of the one idea of 'perfectness' ; or 
under the proposition, that everything great and 
strong is agreeable in comparison with what is 
small and weak. It has already been remarked 
within his own school (Hartenstein) that this 
agreeable feeling is not a genuinely ethical appro- 
bation ; and that this ' perfectness ' itself is not 
an ethical excellence, but only a formal determi- 
nation, which indeed of itself excites interest or 
agreeable feeling, but for the rest is applicable 
in like degree to moral and to immoral conduct. 
It needed in this connection a bare allusion ; be- 
cause without it moral conduct cannot exist, but 
not because such conduct directly consists in it. 

The fourth group also (§ 14), which concerns 
the personal character, stands in close connection 
with the foregoing : it comprises forms in which 
not only the moral, but not less the immoral also, 
attains its highest cultivation. 

It is only the third group (§ 13) which com- 
prises those moral ideals that of themselves excite 
unconditioned approbation. But even among the 
three members of this group, this is really accurate 
only of Benevolence, That is to say, if we con- 
ceive of (touching the second member of this 



VIRTUE IMPLIES PLEASURE AXD PAIX. 33 

group) a ' strife ' between two forces which are 
not capable of experiencing any pain whatever 
from it, then we should see in such strife an 
absolutely indifferent fact, which would be of no 
less value than the other case of a harmonious 
co-operation of forces equally blind. The ' strife ' 
is disagreeable and its peaceful issue agreeable, 
merely because we expect from the former the 
origination of pain, and from the latter a diminu- 
tion of it. Just so (passing on to the third 
member) retribution, if it were to consist in a 
mere mechanical distribution of states which 
work weal or woe to nobody, would be in no 
respect better than any disproportionateness and 
any inequality. It has an expressly ethical content 
only in so far as it unites ' merit 1 and 'reward,' 
'guilt' and 'punishment'; and these four con- 
ceptions would be devoid of all specifiable mean- 
ing, if no element of the world could experience 
pleasure or pain. 

We therefore return to the quite simple and fun- 
damental thought previously propounded. There 
is such a thing as moral judgment of conduct only 
upon the assumption that this conduct leads to 
pleasure or pain. But to this conscience joins the 
further truth, that it is not the effort after our own, 
but only that for the production of another's felicity, 



34 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

which is ethically meritorious ; — and, accordingly, 
that the idea of benevolence must give us the sole 
supreme principle of all moral conduct. 



CHAPTER III. 

CONCERNING THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 

§16. Moral judgment imputes our conduct to us 
not merely as having perfectness or deficiency, but 
as having merit and guilt. Both these conceptions 
have always appeared meaningless to the ordinary 
reflection, unless it might be presupposed that the 
conduct which has occurred could just as well have 
been left unperformed ; and that, therefore, it is not 
the necessary consequence of our spiritual states, 
but has originated through a free act of the will. 

We have now to pass in review the opinions 
which contend over this 'freedom of will/ 

§ 17. That quite decided form of Determinism, 
which makes all the actions of animate beings pro- 
ceed according to general laws from their inner 
spiritual states, with the same necessity as physical 
effects do from their blind causes, is in itself con- 
sidered perfectly clear and free from contradiction. 

There is only one fact which can bring us at all 
to the fancy, that the case stands otherwise with 
human conduct than with such effects ; — and that 
is the feeling of penitence and self-condemnation. 



36 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Accordingly, then, Determinism explains the mat- 
ter to itself in such a way as to see in this feeling 
nothing but a condition of discomfort, altogether 
similar to that discomfort which we experience 
concerning ourselves when something goes wrong 
with us, or we are unable to solve some problem. 
It is only because we experience unpleasant effects 
from actions which have proceeded from ourselves, 
that there becomes attached to the aforesaid 
feeling the illusion of supposing the actions, which 
have not been conditioned from without to have 
also had no necessary basis within us ; and the 
feeling of discomfort which, in the case of any- 
thing going wrong, is directed against the external 
hindrance to our doing somewhat, falls back upon 
ourselves in this other case where our own actions 
give us trouble. This it is which gives to the 
feeling of repentance the peculiar coloring, by 
means of which it is distinguished from every 
other form of discontent. But our drawing a 
conclusion from this feeling to a 'freedom of the 
will/ is due to an error which we commit merely 
because we do not see through the mode of the 
origin of this feeling. 

The above-mentioned view admits also of being 
carried out in a practical way. Of course, we 
could no longer impute merit and guilt to any 



FATALISM THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE. 37 

form of conduct, but would have to consider it 
like the behavior of the animals, which unavoid- 
ably corresponds to their nature. But just as 
naturally should we discover, that the behavior of 
one excites in another emotions of vengeance, 
or of a retribution that, in such case, would no 
longer be regarded as ethical punishment, but 
only as mechanical reaction against impressions 
received. 

He who is pleased with this complete trans- 
mutation of human life into a play of fatalistic 
forces, void of merit and blame, is not to be 
confuted on speculative grounds. The moving 
reason for contradicting such views lies entirely 
in an undemonstrable but strong and immediate 
conviction that it is not so, and that the conception 
of * an ought ' and of an obligation, which finds no 
place at all in such a view, has nevertheless, the 
most indubitable and incontrovertible significance. 

§ 18. There have been manifold attempts to 
reconcile necessity according to the law of causa- 
tion with the wished-for freedom. 

In the first place, however, it is an error when 
Herbart thinks to reckon an action moral merely 
on the ground that it is willed, and not on the 
ground of the way in which this will itself origi- 



38 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

nated. When we acquiesce in the origin of conduct 
from a will, we have beyond this already made the 
assumption that such will is determined by no 
cause. On the other hand, we should not acquiesce 
in the aforesaid origin, if the will were expressly 
defined as an inner movement which unavoidably 
originates from previous spiritual states in accord- 
ance with general laws. 

It is further quite erroneous to say that " true 
freedom is identical with necessity." We may in 
every case honor with the name of freedom the 
consistent development of a being which, without 
any external compulsion, simply follows its own 
nature. But this arbitrary name in such a case 
signifies absolutely nothing that would have any 
connection with the moral l freedom of the will ' 
which we desire. For this latter freedom absolutely 
requires that the spirit in its willing and acting 
be independent not merely of external causes, but 
also of 'its own nature' ; that it must execute not 
merely that which is consequent upon what is 
preformed in this nature of its own, but must at 
every moment be able to turn about, step out 
of this path, and break off the consecutiveness of 
its development with an entirely new beginning. 

The same thing holds good in the third place, 
against Kant's attempt to assume, in the life of the 



KANT S THEORY OF FREEDOM. 39 

spirit within time, the complete conditionating of all 
subsequent states by the earlier, and therefore 
a perfect ' ^/zfreedom ' ; and, on the contrary, to 
ascribe to the spirit as a ' Thing-in-itself, — and 
therefore, as it were, in a timeless existence which 
lies at the basis of the life in time — a quondam 
freedom of self-determination, by which it has created 
for itself that character which now in the life 
in time discharges itself forth unalterably into its 
consequences. However the case may stand with 
the metaphysical satisfactoriness of this view, it 
furnishes us, instead of that in which we take an 
interest, something else which is a matter ^of com- 
plete indifference to us. Unless we are able in 
this life in time, which is the only one that we 
know of and are actually living, to repeat at every 
moment the aforesaid self-determination, we shall 
not be consoled for such a loss by any free act 
which we are assumed to have brought to pass 
in some existence altogether unknown to us. 

§ 19. The attempt to justify this freedom must 
be preceded by the inquiry, whether it be not 
forbidden by the antecedent certainty of the law 
of causation, which holds good without exception. 
That the law does hold good may itself be deduced 
from experience or from a priori grounds. 



40 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

As far as the first position is concerned, it 
cannot once be asserted that experience alone 
teaches the validity of the law of causation for all 
parts of the course of nature. For many regions 
are here still so unknown that we simply carry 
the validity of this law over to them also from 
those well-known regions in which it indubitably 
holds good. We do not deny that this is right- 
fully done ; but we do not deem it to be self- 
evident that the same conformity to law controls 
also all parts of that spiritual life so totally different 
in kind. 

Nor can we bring empirical proof for this law 
from direct self -observation. If we believe our- 
selves able to demonstrate in many cases how our 
decision has been determined by the antecedent 
spiritual states, still in just as numerous other 
cases we are able to do no such thing. And even 
the first cases are ambiguous. If two motives a 
and lb have been weighed in the mind, and there- 
upon an action p is executed, which corresponds to 
b, then, of course, afterwards the appearance 
always originates for our point of view as though 
p were naturally brought about by b and its 
ascendency over a, with a strict necessity. But 
for the intensities of the motives a and b we 
possess no measure at all, by which we might 



THE ARGUMENT FROM STATISTICS. 41 

be able to measure them off previous to the 
occurrence of the action. That b has been the 
stronger of the two is a bare hypothesis, which 
we make ex post just because we have been accus- 
tomed to deduce effects in nature from such 
preponderance of a greater force over the less. If, 
on the contrary, we just assume that there has 
been an act of free will which decided for p, then 
everything will appear exactly the same in the pro- 
cedure. In that case, too, we shall be able after- 
wards to consider b as the stronger motive ; only 
its preponderance in that case will simply derive 
its origin from the free resolution with which the 
will decides for it. 

All self-observations are therefore ambiguous. 
The attempt has been made to supplement them 
by statistics, which cover the actions of whole 
multitudes of people. It is believed that the dis- 
covery has been made, that a like number of the 
same crimes repeat themselves with the greatest 
regularity in like times and a like multitude of 
people. 

Such results as the foregoing depend upon very 
untrustworthy calculations. Were the results 
certain, however, their significance would still be 
doubtful. Were there some secret reason or 
other, compelling the existence of a constant 



42 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

relation in the course of the world between the 
sum-total of the good and bad elements, still this 
conformity to law could only refer to the intentions, 
which are the only thing really good and bad ; it 
could not refer to the actions that reach an accom- 
plishment, and in enumerating which the most 
different degrees of the badness and goodness, 
that have led to actions of the same kind, remain 
unobserved; — just as unobserved also those inner 
agitations, that have been restrained by external 
hindrances from the committing of a deed. On 
the other hand, the frivolous assertion — a definite 
number of crimes belongs to the order of the 
world, whoever commits them — is perfectly absurd. 

The other mode also of representing the matter, 
according to which these crimes have no constant 
number, but change with the condition of circum- 
stances, does not prove the existence of a law 
which the decisions of the will are compelled to 
follow ; on the contrary, it only shows that the 
sum-total of the bad (of which no account was taken 
above but which is always really present) finds some- 
times more and sometimes less of opportunity for 
passing over into visible deeds. 

Finally ; if it be granted that a constant (as 
first claimed) or a variable (as last claimed) appar- 
ent ' conformity to law ■ actually takes place, still 



THE A PRIORI VIEW OF CAUSATION. 43 

it is an altogether arbitrary thing to acknowledge 
it as being more than a fact, — as being, that 
is, an actual effect of the working of law. If 
every act of will were in fact perfectly and 
unconditionally free, still every regular or irregular 
expression of it in deeds would be just as pos- 
sible, and just as little mysterious, as every other. 
The conjecture, therefore, that such a determining 
law exists in the multitudes of cases observed, 
is itself the product of the presupposition, that 
all these events are subject to conditioning causes. 
In this way, accordingly, no proof against the 
fact of freedom can be found ; because the entire 
consideration, and the entire reason for surprise 
at the aforesaid alleged regularities of action, 
depends wholly upon the prejudgment that all 
events are, as a matter of course, conditioned 
events. 

§ 20. Another way is taken, when the causal con- 
nection is considered to hold good without any 
exception, as a truth that is inborn to our spirit and 
self-evident, such as makes any freedom impossible. 

Now, however, it is to be borne in mind, that it is 
just the infinite regressus to which this assumption 
compels us, that makes us suspect the absolute 
validity of the law of causation. The natural 



-L-i PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ire indeed : ated, in 

order to form a conception of the world, to assume 
not only a great number of different elements which 
always were without cause, but also a great number 
of motions which take place between them in defi- 
nite directions. Starting from a multitude of ele- 
ments absolute!;, at rest, no motion can be produced 
we pursue a still further deduc- 
tion, it nevertht .variably presupposes otl 
new motion - we are compelled to admit, that 
motion does not attain to actuality as the result of 

but it is motion, without ci 
and from the beginning. 

An if :his must be once for all admitted as 

an existing fact, then there is no reason why per- 
fectly new beginnings of a subsequent origin, that 
r no foundation in what is prior, should not also 
show themselves ::hin the course of things; but 
after they have once taken their place in the cohe- 
rent system of things actual, they bring after them 
the s t :; usee lences which belong to them in their 
-ent combination with the rest of the world, 
according to general lai 

On the above-mentioned grounds it is self-evident, 

tha: such ' new beginning/ and therefore 

Dn of a :'l, must be inexplicable 

with respect to tb in which it comes to 



DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM. 45 

pass ; for to ' explain ' means nothing more than 
to show that a definite event is the result of its 
antecedents in accordance with general rules. The 
incomprehensible character of free determination is 
therefore no reason against the assumption of it, 
but is a consequence of its very conception. 

§ 21. In the interest of methodology it is cus- 
tomary further to object, that it is an unallowable 
Dualism to permit the two principles of Deter- 
minism and Freedom to prevail side by side in the 
world. 

But it is only to the adherents of the first view 
that this appears as a ' dualism ' ; for if we start 
from the conception of a necessary connection, then 
we have of course no reason for arriving at the 
conception of freedom. If, on the contrary, we 
take the existence of the latter for granted, then 
it is found that freedom itself, in order that it may 
be even thought of as being what it aims at being, 
postulates a very widely extended — although not 
an exclusive — prevalence of the law of causation. 
For a free decision can never come to actual con- 
duct, unless there is a system of things, relations, 
and events, which infallibly cohere according to 
general laws; so that the will, if it has attached a 
state a to one of these elements, can reckon with 



46 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

perfect security upon its being followed by only a, 
and not by another state p. If, on the contrary, such 
an action at the beginning as a, could be followed 
with the same right by every possible p, 7, 8, etc., 
then all conduct would be at an end ; because we 
should never be certain of reaching a definite aim 
by means of the chosen beginning. 

Consequently, the principle of Freedom includes 
the other principle of Determinism, and the charge 
of Dualism is groundless. 

§ 22. Another question is, whether a will thus 
free answers to our ethical demands. The opinion 
is frequently expressed, that a decision so blind, 
which does not do what is good for the good's sake, 
is no prerogative of man, but an irrational and 
morally worthless capacity. 

On the contrary, our reply is as follows : It is 
quite incorrect to speak of a ' blind ' will. For 
from the very beginning we possess will not as 
an isolated, independently existing power, but only 
as a movement in a spirit that is alive throughout ; 
and therefore as considered to be inseparable from 
consciousness and from the judgment of the value 
of different possible forms of conduct. 

But this also appears to us to meet the case. As 
soon as the knowledge of the value of different 






FREEDOM AND PSYCHICAL MECHANISM. 47 

forms of conduct exists, it is precisely by this means 
that the will of the spirit who decides for the one 
form or the other, becomes responsible. We are 
on no account, however, to assume, in addition to the 
existence of this knowledge, a mechanical activity 
on its part by means of which it determines the 
direction of the will. Perfectly fruitless, to wit, 
are all the attempts, which, while admitting, for- 
sooth ! such an activity, nevertheless try to distin- 
guish it, as a mere i invitation ' or ' inclination ' of 
the will, from its complete determination. 

Finally, the remark must be added, that it is not 
freedom and, therefore, not the still undecided will, 
which is the object of moral judgment. This free- 
dom may be called in itself perfectly worthless or 
irrational ; but it is the conditio sine qua non in 
order that merit or fault of will may be possible. 
It is only the will after decision, which has now 
cancelled its freedom, that is as respects its content 
bad or good ; but that could be neither of the two, 
if it had not originated in the aforesaid manner. 

§ 23. If the foregoing claims are conceded, so far 
as freedom in itself is considered, then we come 
upon new difficulties, still, when freedom is consid- 
ered in connection with the mechanism of our 
psychical life, into which it must necessarily enter, 
if it is to be effective at all. 



48 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

For every decision of the free will finds in our 
mind certain states — partly ideas, partly feelings, 
partly efforts — which it must either change or 
guard against impending changes. Now since these 
changes are all without doubt connected together 
according to general laws, and therefore fall under 
the conception of a mechanism, the will, in order 
to be able to achieve aught in this region, would 
be obliged each time to transform itself into a defi- 
nite power of definite magnitude, which is just 
sufficient to produce the required effect in accord- 
ance with the laws of this mechanism. 

The foregoing peculiar demand might be avoided 
with the assertion ; the will does nothing but will. 
Whether what it wills is brought to pass even sim- 
ply within the soul, and therefore whether the 
passions which oppose it are overcome or not, does 
not depend on it: rather must the collective state 
of the mind be of such a fortunate sort, that the 
effect wished for by the will results from the mind, 
as it were of itself; and where this is not so, the 
good will is inoperative. 

We are conversant with the above-mentioned 
opinion only in the processes of religious thought. 
The prayer, for example, that God may strengthen 
our weak will, does not mean that God is to will 
for us ; that we rather reserve for ourselves to do. 



THE EFFECTIVE INTENSITY OF WILL. 49 

But we pray that efficient energy may be imparted 
to the will, such as it does not have of itself ; and 
we are in this case inclined to let even our moral 
judgment rest satisfied with bare good will, and 
put off the lack in executing it upon human weak- 
ness. 

It is nevertheless impossible to carry out such 
a view as the one just stated. If we define it 
sharply, — that is to say, if we make the will not 
merely in general too weak, but of itself perfectly 
ineffective, — then it can no longer be told by what 
means the will is still to be distinguished from a 
mere theoretical insight into the praiseworthiness 
or badness of an action. Now however little we 
may be able to describe in yet other words its 
essential nature, it is none the less certain, that we 
are speaking of the will only in case there exists 
a certain amount of exertion toward its actualization, 
in addition to the aforesaid insight. That is to 
say : Every act of the will must have some degree 
of effective intensity. 

Now if freedom is to be at the same time main- 
tained, such degree of strength, too, could not be 
conditioned upon anything external to the will ; 
and we should therefore be compelled to demand 
that a perfect freedom determine, not merely the 
direction which the will is to take, but also the 



50 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

energy with which it projects itself in this direction. 
If therefore our good will has at any time been 
' too weak ' to withstand our passions, this is no 
excuse for us, but an accusation against us. And, 
indeed, we are wont in our judgment of ourselves 
to make use of that expression (' too weak •) only in 
the sense of a reproach to ourselves. 

With this remark we close this analysis, which 
could only be directed to the point of refuting the 
theoretical objection that freedom is unthinkable, 
or that it is inadmissible in the totality of our view 
of the world ; a view, however, that was at once 
assumed to bring forward ideas which are absolutely 
paradoxical, but not on that account any the less 
possible, and which one* must apprehend if one is 
resolved to recognize this theoretically undemon- 
strable freedom as < a postulate of the practical 
reason/ 



Second Principal Division. 






Second Principal Division. 



TRANSITION. 

§ 24. The ethical ideals previously treated of, whose 
focal point ultimately is the Idea of Benevolence, 
we held to be obligatory upon all spirits, however 
in other regards their nature may be constituted. 
But we are, of course, only able to follow out the 
realization of these ideals in the relations of our 
earthly life. 

What follows, therefore, appears as an application 
of what has preceded to the situation of the world 
of men ; but we should not wish this to be under- 
stood as if these applications were only examples of 
the universal ethical ideas ; — examples, that is to 
say, in which fundamentally that only is of value 
which repeats in them the universal factor, while 
their special peculiarities would be worthless supple- 
ments, such as could not be wanting if the universal 
factor were to be realized. 

Our view is rather the reverse. It is in these 
particular forms which the universal assumes that 
that wealth of value first makes its appearance 



54 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

which can be developed from the universal, but 
which is not developed so long as it remains uni- 
versal. The love of the sexes, the love of parents 
and of brothers and sisters, friendship, fellowship, 
etc., are special forms of benevolence induced by 
the natural relations of mankind, each of which in its 
living characteristic coloring is of much more value 
than general benevolence of itself. And just so are 
other definite virtues, which are possible only by 
means of those natural conditions of human life, 
to be held in much higher esteem than as though 
they were mere examples to be subsumed under 
their universal concepts. 

§ 25. The arrangement of the material will be 
simple. It is tolerably useless, and a mere logical 
entertainment, to investigate the question whether 
Practical Philosophy is to be constructed as a system 
of duties, of rights, of virtues, or of kinds of good. 
All these formal conceptions would invariably have 
to treat of nothing but the same content, the 
actualization of which we either demand of our- 
selves as our ' duty/ or of others toward us as our 
s right ' ; or else which we prize and honor as any- 
body's mode of activity, or as a product established 
by such activity. 

Not a single one of these general notions, how- 



NATURAL ETHICAL RELATIONS. 55 

ever, would of itself lead to the particular sub- 
species sought for, until we should have learned to 
recognize the definite particular relations with ref- 
erence to which these so general claims first 
assume a definite stamp. 

That is to say, therefore, we should be compelled 
even in such a case to take our start from the con- 
sideration of those points of application which are 
given to our moral effort by the natural relations 
under which we live. 

§ 26. The above-mentioned relations themselves 
we do not bring to our mind's view as a disorderly 
heap ; on the contrary, we of course follow the 
assumption that the creative power which has dis- 
posed us iif the midst of them has meant something 
by them ; and that they therefore form a series of 
well-ordered impulses, by means of which our moral 
development ought to be conducted. 

But this they no longer do in the form of such 
impulses. We do not suppose that everything 
which nature does can be a moral pattern for us, 
or that everything unnatural is also immoral. The 
rather are the facts of nature everywhere to be 
apprehended simply as admonitions to reflect upon 
this question; — namely, by what kind of conduct 
the greatest possible good would be won from them. 



56 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Finally, we do not raise this inquiry for the first 
time ; but as long as the race of men has existed, 
it has been busied in solving it in the way of 
action, by founding the great ethical institutions 
which have maintained themselves through all the 
vicissitudes of history in different forms. 

§ 27. If now, on the one hand, we should fail of 
attention to everything which must be the subject of 
treatment by us, were it not for this preparatory 
work of the human race in history ; still, on the 
other hand, such historical effort is itself never 
wholly concluded. 

The Practical Philosophy of each age has, there- 
fore, the problem of separating from human insti- 
tutions that which, according to the experience of 
man in history extending up to this age, does not 
accord so well in its further results and consequences 
with ethical demands of a universal character, as it 
appeared to earlier times to do. Or, to express 
the same thing in other terms : Practical Philosophy 
is itself a part of this practical effort of humanity to 
win the greatest possible good from the given rela- 
tions of nature. 

Starting from this point of view it may appear — 
especially if in accordance with frequent usage we 
designate it by the name of ' natural right ' — to 



METHOD OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 57 

stand in an obscure relation to what is called 
' right ' in the narrower meaning of the word. 
On this point it is for the present perfectly suffi- 
cient to express ourselves as follows : Practical 
Philosophy has simply to point out those aims, 
after the realization of which we are compelled to 
strive, as often as the question is one de lege 
ferenda in any human affair. Their claims to the 
place of a valid and obligatory i right ' can only 
arise in the same way as that in which we shall 
subsequently see that every right in society 
originates. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE INDIVIDUAL PERSON. 

§ 28. The individual owes his existence, as well 
as the possibility of its continuance and of all 
moral cultivation, so much to the human society 
in which he is included, that we can make him 
the object of our first reflections only in case we 
assume beforehand the existence of such human 
society ; we may regard it, however, simply as a 
number of other individuals which are as yet not 
connected with each other by means of any 
definite institutions, but merely by the possibility 
of some kind of intercourse with one another. 

Under the aforesaid assumption, the inquiry may 
be raised : In what do the moral aim, the duty, 
and the right of the individual person consist ? 

§ 29. The first question has been answered dif- 
ferently by the ancient and the Christian culture. 

To antiquity, man appeared without any manifest 
attachment to a coherent system transcending his 
earthly life, pre-eminently as a creature of nature, 
whose aim — not so much moral, as altogether 
natural — could only consist in bringing all the 



THE VICE OF EGOISM. 59 

bodily and spiritual capacities with which he is 
endowed by nature, to the most intensive, and at 
the same time harmonious cultivation. 

It is not necessary to make prominent the cor- 
rect view on this point, but simply to remark that 
in this 'beautiful' development of the individual, 
yet a trait of egoism is involved. This whole 
culture is not a preparation of the powers for a 
work to be accomplished ; but it is a self-aim to 
such an extent that the self -enjoyment of one's 
own fair personality, and its secure tenure against 
all attacks from without, forms the sole content of 
such a life. On this account, it may be said that 
antiquity was very susceptible with respect to all 
the aesthetic and formal elements which the moral 
ideas contain ; on the contrary, it was very little 
so with respect to the ultimate principle, benevo- 
lence, — that is to say, the service of others, — which 
constitutes the focal point of ethical ideas. 

Just the opposite of this, under the influence of 
Christianity, the conviction is formed that, strictly 
speaking, every man is called only to the service of 
others ; that the effort to concentrate all possible 
excellences in one's own person is, at bottom, only 
a ' shining vice ' ; but true morality consists in 
the complete surrender of one's own self, and in 
self-sacrifice for others. Here, too, it is not neces- 



60 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

sary to make prominent the correct view ; and 
almost as little necessary to observe that the 
service of others neither excludes that aesthetic 
culture, nor can it consist altogether in an uncon- 
ditional self-sacrifice, which, if it were exercised 
by all, would produce no assignable result what- 
ever. 

Nothing, therefore, remains for us to do but to 
supplement the ancient self-satisfaction, without 
surrendering aesthetic culture, by having all the 
powers acquired by such culture placed at com- 
mand for the accomplishment of a life-aim in 
accordance with motives of benevolence. 

§ 30. On endeavoring, in the next place, to define 
such a life of action 'in relation to the external 
world, we reject two things : — 

First, every ascetic direction, which thinks to 
serve morality by fleeing from every natural enjoy- 
ment, and which, in case it puts in the place of 
enjoyment nothing else but renunciation and indif- 
ference to all needs, only leads to the impoverishing 
of life and hinders the originating of innumerable 
good things of beauty. 

In the same manner do we reject the assertion 
that a merely contemplative life is preferable to a 
life of action. All contemplation finds a material 



THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE. 6 1 

worthy of it, only in remembrance of the dilemmas 
and fatalities of actual life. Even the consideration 
of nature awakens thoughts of real value only for 
him who rediscovers in its particulars, symbols for 
the complications he has recognized, and solutions 
of that real life which in pain and pleasure lays 
hold on the entire man. 

Even the ancient preference for knowledge and 
a dianoetic life, we are compelled to reject. The 
maxim that the ' truth ' should be sought for its own 
sake and without other immediate motive has, of 
course, its good meaning in the sum-total of our 
culture. Although it is just as correct to say that 
the problem of reproducing over again in conscious- 
ness what is just precisely as it is, has not of itself 
the very slightest moral value. We are right in 
being very enthusiastic for science, only on account 
of the fact, partly that we discern the usefulness 
of its impulse for the sum-total of human life so 
well as to renounce all claim to see a special appli- 
cation for every individual truth ; and partly that 
the general character of truth, its consistency, and 
the manifoldness of the consequences that follow 
with certainty from a few principles, places before 
our very eyes an actualization of what we ought 
to attain in the moral world by our own conduct. 
Certainly, therefore, nothing but the practical life 



62 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

of action is the scene which we ought to seek for 
the exhibition of our powers : all contemplation, 
however, and all asceticism are only permissible as 
momentary forms of life, which endeavor to make 
what experiences are here had, further useful for 
subsequent life, or for other persons. 

§ 31. The content of this life of action is denned 
for us, in the first place, by our natural necessities. 
The maintenance of life, the increase of its comfort, 
the warding off of pain from ourselves, and participa- 
tion in those sufferings of others which the course of 
nature unavoidably induces, — these things constitute 
the occasions which, in part, produce the formal vir- 
tues, like industry, patience, love of order, and con- 
sistency, and also in part, invite and remind us to 
exercise benevolence. This they do so much the more 
manifoldly, the oftener those social conflicts which 
summon us to the conservation of moral sympathy 
occur in the larger development of human relations. 

All the preceding considerations may be left to 
the history of culture. Only one thing may be 
alluded to, — namely, that it is just in connection 
with this intricacy of relation that the necessity 
occurs for a division of labor. 

Labor itself is simply a necessity ; and its 
achievement of itself becomes a moral deed only 



THE ETHICS OF LABOR. 63 

by its being recognized as a necessary condition 
for realizing different kinds of good, and on this 
account not being shunned. It, at all events, brings 
into being the formal virtues ; it teaches us at 
once to respect the nature of another, if it be noth- 
ing more than that of the material upon which the 
labor is expended. But in and of itself, we are 
obliged still to accord with the ancient view, that 
the true human life first begins in the leisure that 
follows labor. 

Now the division of labor into different branches 
has for us, in addition to the well-known advantages 
which the theory of economics considers, the yet 
other advantage, that the new moral conception 
of a calling originates, by choosing and following 
which the individual within the society in which 
he lives is first changed from a mere individual into 
a person ; and is now no longer merely that which 
all others are, too, but assumes in connection with 
them a place that belongs to him alone. 

§ 32. It would be tolerably useless to speak fur- 
ther of the rights and duties of the individual person 
before the definite relations are brought into con- 
sideration, under which both originate. 

1 Rights ' are not thought to be possessed toward 
the forces of nature, toward the elements and toward 



64 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the wild beasts. They are merely made to hold 
good toward beings who understand them and can 
feel themselves obligated by their own conscience 
to observe them. It is, therefore, altogether unfit- 
ting to speak first of the ' rights ' which one has, 
and then deduce from them the ' duties of others 
toward us.' It is rather that to which we in our 
conscience feel ourselves obligated toward others, 
that forms the ' right ' of these others toward us ; 
and that now becomes our ' right' only in so far 
as we must assume in these others the same feeling 
of obligation toward us. 

To speak of ' natural rights ' which belong to 
the individual person is, therefore, in itself false. 
By ( nature ' man has merely physical and spiritual 
capacities and the possibility of exercising them ; 
but he has a ' right ' to the last, without exception, 
only in society, and indeed, without exception also, 
only to the extent to which the latter feels itself 
obligated to concede such exercise. 

Every i right ' is therefore — strictly speaking — 
in itself a definite limitation of a natural capacity, 
or of some claim made by us. But a right can be 
called ' natural ' only in so far as it is not earned by 
special title ; — that is, in so far as it is enough to 
be a man among men in order to know that others 
are obligated to its observance. 






THE MORALITY OF SUICIDE. 65 

§ 33. Ditties could be appropriately spoken of 
in this connection only so far as the individual 
person might be holden for them, not to others 
but to himself. 

All these so-called ' duties to one's self/ neverthe- 
less, become intelligible and appear obligatory only 
in case we assume that the person has a conviction 
concerning the value of his position in the totality 
of the world at large ; and this takes place princi- 
pally by means of the control over our sentiments 
by a religious circle of thought. 

It is on the foregoing consideration, for example, 
that the turn which our judgment shall take con- 
cerning the permissibility of suicide depends. By 
antiquity, which saw in the person merely a product 
of nature whose intelligible aim must be to unfold 
itself as beautifully and as happily as possible, suicide 
was deemed allowable as soon as these two aims 
were no longer attainable. Christian culture, which 
conceives of man as having a supermundane — 
although not demonstrable — calling, and a task 
allotted to him on earth by God, naturally finds 
in this the reason for regarding as wanton wick- 
edness every wilful abbreviation of such testing thus 
imposed upon him. 

According to influences altogether similar, our 
conceptions of personal honor are different from 



66 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

those of antiquity. But although we still believe 
so much to be due to our honor, the significance of 
our belief nevertheless is, that such duties are 
owing, not to us as definite individual persons, but 
to that conception of personality in general which 
has a living expression in us also, and to its value 
in the connected system of the ordering of the 
world. 



CHAPTER V. 

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY. 

§ 34. The first fixed moral institution, marriage, 
is founded upon a fact of nature, the peculiar neces- 
sity and significance of which we do not at all 
understand. For, in fact, it is not possible to tell 
exactly why the contrast of the sexes must exist, — 
a contrast which extends down into the kingdom 
of plants ; and all attempted explanations on this 
matter issue in trifling. 

But the above-mentioned fact does no harm. 
The problem of Practical Philosophy is merely 
this ; — to investigate how this fact of nature can 
be turned to best account, and as much moral good 
as possible secured from it. 

In answering the foregoing question, observation 
of nature assists us very little. The animal world 
shows us on every hand examples of polygamy and 
monogamy, of polyandry and polygyny; and the 
animals all get along well with it. The great differ- 
ence of vital force in the different ages of life 
certainly makes marriage between parents and chil- 
dren unnatural ; but that between brothers and 



68 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

sisters appears rather to be quite worthy of com- 
mendation. Even the helplessness of children is 
a motive for their parents to live together merely 
temporarily for bringing them up. All these ' becks 
of nature' have actually been followed at different 
times and amidst different forms of national culture. 

§ 35. The principal point in the modern view 
concerning the ideal of marriage lies in our estimate 
of the value and honor of personality. 

Man is, indeed, not only an end to himself, but 
he is so in such a degree that he can never be used 
entirely as means for other ends. Now the fulfilment 
of the natural end of propagation brings man into 
this position of being subjected to the general forces 
of nature, and of serving another with what is most 
peculiar to his personality, — namely, his body, — 
merely as a means for the fulfilment of this end. 

We assert — following Kant as predecessor — 
that this complete surrender works no detriment 
to personal honor only in case it is returned by just 
as complete and unreserved surrender of the other 
personality in relation to all the interests of life. 

From this it follows, first, that marriage must be 
no temporary union but a fellowship of the whole 
life, of all human and divine interests ; further, that 
only monogamy corresponds to this ideal, because 



THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT. 69 

continually does that party, which enters several 
times into a relation of this kind with some one 
else, lose in value and fall back toward the place 
where it has the significance of a useful means. 
It follows, finally, that the essential content of the 
duties which are to be assumed by those espoused 
in marriage, is everywhere a perfectly definite one 
according to national custom, and cannot be newly 
determined according to the preference of those 
who come together. Only the decision to enter 
into this institution of marriage depends upon a 
free contract of the two persons, A and B ; the 
content of the institution itself is not to be changed 
by contract. This corresponds to other analogies : 
for example, service in war, offices, etc., can be 
of free will sought for and assumed, but the 
prescripts of the service must then be assumed 
in the manner in which they are of themselves 
established. 

§ 36. The perfect moral equivalence of the two 
partners in marriage does not annul the necessity 
that a single will must decide in relation to the 
externalities of the conduct of life. It is, there- 
fore, a matter of course that the husband bring 
his decisions as much as possible into accord with 
the wishes and views of his wife ; but in such 



JO PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

manner, that, in case of a permanent difference of 
opinion, the control over such affairs — and, there- 
fore, representing the family out of doors, the 
choice of the dwelling-place, the assuming of an 
office, the decision concerning the spending of 
property — belongs to him alone ; while to the 
wife the management of the inner household affairs 
falls as a customary thing, and the rank and stand- 
ing and social honor of her husband pass over 
upon her as well. 

§ 37. There is no power on earth which should 
be able to make or rightly to compel a marriage 
between two persons. Its only origin is without 
exception the voluntary agreement of the parties 
themselves. 

Nevertheless, since every marriage is formed 
within a society from which it demands for itself, 
for its property and its offspring, respect and the 
protection of rights, such society has a right to 
require a solemn publication of the decision that 
has been made, and to express its own will in the 
recognition of that decision, or in interposing to 
prevent it. 

The purpose of recognizing the marriage, which 
includes likewise the obligation to protect the 
rights of what is recognized, is the one pursued 



STATE CONTROL OF MARRIAGE. 7 1 

by all those civil or ecclesiastical ceremonies which 
are frequently but erroneously designated as a 
real 'concluding' of the marriage. 

But originally all interposition can take place 
in the interest of society only, and for the defence 
of the moral spirit which it wishes to maintain 
in power in its own midst. Society can, therefore, 
strictly speaking, only proscribe from its circle 
those who will not adhere to its customs ; or it can 
temporarily suspend the exercise of the recognized 
right to conclude the marriage, until the condi- 
tions are fulfilled under which it can recognize the 
marriage without detriment to itself. But in and 
of itself society has no right to execute punishment 
upon forms of conduct which merely contradict its 
ways of looking at things, and which have not as 
yet gone so far as to work positive harm to it. 

Thus the forbidding of bigamy and of marriage 
between brothers and sisters and very near rela- 
tives, belongs to those general views which our 
modern society seeks to maintain in force at any 
price ; — the latter, not because it contradicts any 
(not demonstrable) i command of nature,' but be- 
cause a correct moral insight condemns the admix- 
ture of different moral relations, each of which 
can unfold its peculiar beauty and worth only 
when it does so purely for its own sake. 



72 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 38. Society has no justification for dissolving 
an existing marriage : it must besides assume that 
each marriage is entered into with the intention 
that it shall be indissoluble. 

If death severs the marriage, then it remains a 
matter of conscience with the surviving party as to 
how far such party will still feel itself bound. 
Society cannot refuse to recognize a second mar- 
riage ; because, with all the high value that marriage 
has, society can nevertheless only regard it as an 
earthly institution, and one in its exclusiveness 
conditioned by a natural relation. 

Questions as to how far society may recog- 
nize on its part the dissolution wished for by the 
partners in marriage, are more difficult. It is 
useless to seek for any decision on this point from 
the ' conception ' of marriage. For this concep- 
tion is itself nothing but the ideal established by 
us which we would gladly attain. The more valu- 
able, however, an ideal is, the more unwholesome 
are all its unsuccessful realizations. And it is of 
no avail to be always opposing to these latter the 
consequences which follow from the ideal itself. 

Our final aim cannot be that of lending support 
to unfortunate attempts at the accomplishment of 
the ideal ; but only that of annulling the unhappi- 
ness which is involved in these unfortunate marriages, 
with the least detriment to the general morality. 



LAWS ON DIVORCE. 73 

All laying down of laws upon this matter there- 
fore follows two points of view. The first is the 
care to preserve the sanctity of marriage ; — through 
increasing the difficulty of severing it by rightly 
requiring that, where once love is held to be 
the uniting element and likewise, besides the en- 
joyment of life, its aim is held to be reciprocal 
moral furtherance, neither sickness nor other mis- 
fortune, nor diseased fancy, nor even crime and 
wanton wickedness, can be a satisfactory motive for 
desiring its severance. But, on the other hand, 
some follow the thought of recognizing the separa- 
tion in cases where the one party expressly makes 
impossible the ends of marriage, either by criminal 
neglect or by personal persecution usurping the 
place of affection. A means of relief in case of 
these difficulties, which accords perfectly with the 
fact, is the recognition of an actual severance of 
the marriage tie ; while the moral bond holds good 
as undissolved, and for the parties separated to 
enter into marriage with others is not permitted. 

§ 39. The dual number of the parents in itself 
makes manifest the fact that the child is not their 
work, but is a pledge entrusted to them by the 
general ordering of the world, — a pledge, toward 
which, on account of their mysterious participation 



74 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

in its production, they have rights and duties that, 
taken together, depend upon this thought : The 
child is a being destined to future moral indepen- 
dence, whose development the parents have to 
further to this end. 

Nothing but the ancient depreciation of the 
female sex could lead to the thought of a patria 
potestas, which ascribed to the father the uncon- 
ditional right over the child's life and death, to- 
gether with an authority over his subsequent fate 
that never admitted of degrees. 

Modern education, on the contrary, seeks to 
secure the subsequent independence of the child 
and to make possible his self-decision concerning 
his coming life, — the choice of a calling and of 
such like matters. Up to that time the parents owe 
their children a maintenance suitable to their rank 
in life, and cultivation. The latter, on the other 
hand, cannot demand more than the means of the 
parents allow ; and since they would not exist at 
all otherwise than by their birth in this family, 
they must be just as much content therewith as 
with the fate of being born in this rather than 
that age, and in a particular nation. 

In bringing up children many controversies are oc- 
casioned by the actual circumstances which do not by 
any means correspond to the conception of marriage. 



RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 75 

It is indisputable, for example, that parents are 
under no obligation to renounce their own religious 
belief, because it could not eventually be the future 
belief of their children. On the contrary, it is not 
correct — a thing which is frequently asserted and 
practised — that one is in duty bound, from early 
life onward and industriously, to fashion quite defi- 
nitely and to limit the religious and moral horizon 
of children. The reflection that even the most cer- 
tain subjective belief may after all be an error, 
must induce us, while setting before children no 
other pattern than that we ourselves approve, to 
refrain for the rest from a sovereign control 
of their spiritual development. But a difference 
in confession of faith on the part of parents, in 
itself considered, contradicts the ideal of marriage. 
It is therefore not possible from the conception 
of this ideal to give universal decisions, for ex- 
ample, concerning the religious confession in which 
children are to be educated. On this point a 
decision cannot be reached, except either, in an 
external way, by enactment of law, or in every 
special case according to grounds of equity and 
opportunity. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN. 

§ 40. The family, although the most important of 
moral institutions, is not adapted to teach the 
most general moral duties and rights of man to- 
ward man. Since a bond of piety everywhere con- 
trols in it, it pardons too much which is in itself 
wrong, and on the other hand demands more than 
is universal duty. 

The same thing is true besides of the patri- 
archal culture of the peoples which, without en- 
countering men of a different kind of culture and 
while existing in a uniform mode of life, have elabo- 
rated a highly specialized ceremonial code that con- 
trols their whole life. It is just here that great 
severity in determining punishments is customarily 
found. Each transgression is, as a rule, avenged 
as though it were a revolt against this sacred 
body of custom, without reference to the degree 
of value which belongs to the different items. 

A change first takes place in all this when the 
encountering of other peoples teaches the fact, 
that other customs also may exist which lead as 



RISE OF THE IDEA OF RIGHTS. JJ 

well to human happiness and to human improve- 
ment. Then the dawning conception of a universal 
'right' confronts the conception of custom: its 
content is obscured in places where special bonds 
of piety maintain themselves, and it is only 
clearly recognized in places where men, otherwise 
foreigners, encounter each other in intercourse of 
some kind. 

§ 41. The most original duty of man in inter- 
course is that of leaving every other unmolested 
until that other has disclosed his purpose to enter 
into some intercourse. 

No one therefore has any right to force unsoli- 
cited services upon another ; although each one 
has at the same time the duty of behaving with 
good will toward the intentions of every other, as 
soon as they are made known to him. Every act 
of providing guardianship for another, or every nego- 
tiorurn gestio, always needs a peculiar foundation of 
its own in right ; and such right may lie either in the 
special relations of the two persons (for example, 
parents and children), or in previous occurrences 
(for example, services rendered), or else, with re- 
ference to many a matter, in the prevalent cus- 
tom of society. The latter, especially, allows of 
much which must be expressly refrained from, in 



78 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

case one discerns therein any disturbance of the 
personality. 

From this maxim of personal inviolability mani- 
fold duties of discretion follow in ordinary social 
converse. Nobody may make another the object 
of his investigation and of his curiosity. Con- 
versely, nobody has the right, in case he once 
enters into relation with another, to force his 
individual originality upon the other ; on the con- 
trary, he has the duty of submitting himself to 
forms of social converse that are universally 
available. As regards the action which any one 
has committed, and which now no longer belongs 
to the interior of his own personality but to the 
common world, in which all men live, every one 
has the right of being judged with praise or 
blame ; on the other hand, it is incumbent on 
God alone to measure the worth or worthlessness 
of the entire personality from which an action 
sprung ; and it is an offence on the side of men, 
which is of course felt to be such for the most 
part — although not exclusively — only in case it 
consists in blame. 

§ 42. The original right of freedom — that is, 
of the free use of one's own powers and of the 
free choice of the ends to which they shall be 



THE RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM. 79 

directed — is self-evident. In society this right, 
like every other, is subject to restrictions, whose 
measure is fixed by the following conditions : 

1. To rob one of freedom without a motive can 
never be permissible; but — 

2. The motives must refer personally to the one 
to be restricted, and therefore never lie in his 
descent and such like matters, but only in his own 
deeds or in his relations to society or in regard 
for the common weal, to which his complete free- 
dom from restriction would be detrimental. 

3. Every permissible deprivation of freedom 
must be only temporary ; one extending through 
the whole life would abolish all difference between 
not recognizing freedom in principle, and the bare 
suspension of the exercise of freedom when recog- 
nized. Finally, — 

4. The deprivation of freedom must also be 
only partial, so that it hinders personal self-control 
only in certain definite directions, but does not 
bind with chains the entire spiritual and bodily 
life. In the latter case, there would arise a con- 
tradiction to the conception of a person ; who may 
indeed suffer himself in many regards to be used 
as means to an end, but must, not like a thing, 
serve wholly for the satisfaction of ends outside 
himself. 



80 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Actual slavery contradicts all the foregoing re- 
quirements : the first by the bare force of the origi- 
nal act of imprisonment without any ground in 
right ; the second and third by the fact that it is a 
matter of inheritance and lasts for life. It would 
be glad effectually to contradict the fourth ; and it 
is only frustrated by the fact that at least thoughts, 
emotions, and dreams, are withdrawn from all con- 
trol by another. 

The historical reasons for ancient slavery make 
its psychological origin comprehensible, without 
justifying it. Taking one a prisoner in war ap- 
peared like a free gift to him of the life of which 
he might have been deprived ; and, consequently, 
this life appeared as the property of the victor. 
The act of sparing it — constituting as it did a 
debt to be discharged only by the performance of 
labor — justified the detention of the debtor by the 
creditor until the discharge of such performance ; 
but it did not justify the transferrence of this per- 
sonal claim to a third person, — and, accordingly, 
not the vendibleness of the slave. 

The reasons of the school with which Aristotle 
justified the slavery of his time are altogether un- 
satisfactory ; there were, he thought, royal souls 
which are born to rule, and others which do not 
understand how to conduct themselves. But there 



MODERN SLAVERY. 8 I 

is no judge who would have the right to decide to 
which class each individual soul belongs. And 
even if the reason were all correct, from it would 
flow duties of compassion toward those in their 
minority, as it were, but never the right to treat 
them as things, and wholly to suppress their own 
will. 

Modern slavery has at least the advantage of 
being founded upon distinctions of race that are 
very manifest ; and from which with but doubtful 
right it is believed that a witness to some spirit- 
ual incapacity of the Negro is to be seen ; from 
which, however, it is certainly not right to deduce 
the aforesaid improper consequences of a sovereign 
control over this lower race. 

§ 43. ' Freedom ' signifies merely the general 
possibility of the use of our capacities. But even 
of every single action it is true, that it must be 
originally respected so long as no special motives 
for the contrary exist ; and that it is, therefore, 
morally unjust to hinder it as well as also to 
deport one's self as though it had not happened 
at all. 

From the foregoing principle there follows, in 
the first place, a multitude of minor rules for the 
right mode of living, which we pass unnoticed ; 



82 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

but, in the next place, the origin of our concep- 
tions of property. 

There are few actions conceivable which do not 
consist in the transformation or using of external 
objects for some end or other. Now every object, 
to which no one has an earlier claim, is with- 
drawn from the disposal of all other persons by 
the fact that a will possesses itself thereof and 
makes it a means for carrying out its designs. 

Now since the activity of man can pursue ends 
of complicated form, which cannot be attained at 
once by a constant activity, it follows besides that 
even during the pauses of action the design of 
the will once expressed must be respected, and 
the object remain reserved for the first will in 
future to dispose of further. In this way the pos- 
session, which consists in the continuous having 
in hand or using of an object, passes over into 
the right of property ; and this right, externally 
invisible, subsists even during those times in which 
the proprietor perhaps is by no means in posses- 
sion of the thing. 

Since, however, we found the entire ground of 
this right in the moral duty of not hindering the 
will of a person, or the plan which this will is 
pursuing, in relation to a thing ; therefore, the 
right of property (so long as it is merely a matter 



THE GROUND OF PROPERTY. 83 

de lege ferendd) would dispense with its basis again 
and consequently be extinguished, in case this will to 
use the thing gave no sign whatever of its con- 
tinuance by any real action, during a time suffi- 
ciently great to serve for human relations. It does 
not belong in this connection, but to the special 
enactment of law, to define the conditions under 
which such a neglect should be assumed to be 
a relinquishing or extinguishing of the right of 
property. 

It is further self-evident that even without injus- 
tice, the property of one person, not yet surren- 
dered, may come into the de facto possession of 
another. In such a case the legal enactment will 
do justice if, while making possible the prosecu- 
tion of the earlier claims, it nevertheless for the 
time being recognizes the right of the one in 
present possession, so as not to bring all relations 
into a condition of doubt and vacillation. 

§ 44. Our first ideas concerning the right of 
inheritance rest upon the same grounds as the 
foregoing. 

It belongs to the essential nature of the family 
that the disposition of the property is incumbent 
on the master of the house ; although the other 
members of the family also have a certain right 



84 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

in it as a common possession, — a right which is 
manifest as soon as it is compared with the com- 
plete lack of all claims to a right on the part of 
strangers. This already existing right comes into 
efficiency after the death of the master of the 
house, by whose greater right it was kept sus- 
pended. The more precise determinations as to 
the manner and apportionment in which this 
takes place, depend in great measure upon the 
customs of society. 

Testamentary directions offer greater difficulties. 
That the will of a person does not reach beyond 
his own life is the truth only to this extent, that 
it can no longer carry itself out by means of phys- 
ical force or action. But the question arises, 
whether it is not just the recognition of the testa- 
mentary directions that is the supplementary means 
by which this efficacy of the will is established. 

Now it is quite obvious that all human culture 
depends upon the after-effects of the individual 
being preserved even subsequent to his death, and 
upon each generation not beginning again from the 
start, as though the earlier ones had not existed. 
This general thought, therefore, compels us to 
approve of just those means which make possible 
such a continuity of human industry. It is a part 
of this thought that — at least in cases where 



TRUTH IN SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. 85 

already existing family claims are not at hand, and 
under certain circumstances even with the abbre- 
viation of such claims — the living person has a 
right to make over the means for carrying out his 
work to that one in whom he has most confidence. 

On the other hand, the later generation also 
must reserve the right of criticism and of change. 
Since the will of no individual is joined with 
omniscience, posterity cannot be forever bound to 
observe directions for the disposition of goods of 
which a better use is possible, when the directions 
have become void of or contrary to their aim. 

§ 45. The main part of intercourse does not 
consist in actions upon external objects but in the 
imparting of ideas. 

In this relation, the general proposition, " One 
must always speak the truth," is, in the first 
place, to be limited by the condition, — " in case 
one has the right and duty of uttering anything 
whatever." And very frequently one has neitlier 
of the two, in reference to truths with which one 
is acquainted. 

But then we are compelled to add in the second 
place : No one has a right absolutely to demand 
truth of another ; but such right always belongs 
to any one, either merely on the ground of quite 



86 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

definite relations in which he stands to the one 
questioned, or on the ground of the general custom 
which he recognizes as well as does the other. 

It is questionable simply whether, in case this 
right is wanting to the demand for truth, the 
answer may contain an untruth. If, for example, 
under threatening of the life, a demand is made 
for information, which may be a source of danger 
to the one questioned or to others, may the danger 
in such a case be averted by an untruth ? 

The valid answer to the foregoing inquiry must 
at least not be held to be dispatched by express- 
ing abhorrence at the well-known maxim : " The 
end sanctifies the means." For it is quite impossible 
without a more precise definition to deprive this 
maxim of all validity, since we very frequently follow 
it in education, in the exercise of the power of pun- 
ishment, in war, etc. ; and besides we are accus- 
tomed to praise the divine government of the 
world precisely on this account, because it leads 
to blessedness through the deepest distress. 

The last case gives into our keeping the necessary 
correction. That is to say, the end good in itself 
sanctifies the means merely for that person who other- 
wise has the right and duty, not simply of wishing 
this end, but also of accomplishing it, and thereby of 
employing everything else as means for its execution. 






THE RIGHT OF DECEPTION. 87 

From the foregoing it would follow for the case 
in hand, that all untruth cannot be forbidden to 
the educator, to whom belongs the right and duty 
of guiding another's dependent course of thought ; 
although its use must necessarily be very much 
restricted by the final purpose of education, — 
namely, conducting such thought to independence. 
It is impossible, however, that the teacher, whose 
duty is the propagation of truth, be permitted to 
communicate what is untrue. Against one's enemy 
toward whom one is in the condition of defending 
imperilled life, one has the right of deception in 
a very extended measure, etc. 

But all such permission to untruth is essentially 
limited, first, by the fact that the consequences 
of an untruth are on the whole much more difficult 
to calculate than those of the truth : and as for 
the entire human life only the latter can be the 
basis of cooperation, so for particular cases also 
the truth is the safer ; and the responsibility for 
the results of a self-fabricated untruth is more 
grave than for those of the truth which does not 
depend upon us. 

Finally, in every single lie there is involved a 
certain shame on the personality. For, either in 
order to excuse itself, or to ward off evil, or to 
attain other ends, it sees itself incapable of living 



PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



on good terms with a recognition of the world as 
it actually is, and compelled to appeal to what 
does not exist. Those characters therefore make 
an altogether different impression who do not lie 
now and then, but who by stirring up false ideas, 
consistently exercise over the minds of men an 
influence which, formally considered, constitutes a 
kind of providence, and which we are therefore 
inclined to judge merely according to whether the 
ends pursued are good and the spirit of the de- 
ceiver powerful enough to justify him in such 
claim to spiritual lordship over others. 

§ 46. Closely connected with the foregoing prin- 
ciples are those governing contracts ; that is to 
say, moral relations of a special kind, which need 
not exist between two persons, but which origi- 
nate solely by means of their concordant will. 
They are, of course, in our real life placed under 
the protection of laws ; but these laws would not 
be called upon to protect them, unless some 
worthy moral element lay within the contracts 
themselves. 

Now every contract amounts to this, that, by 
promises of the first part and the second part, ideas, 
expectations, and actions are excited in both which 
fit into the whole plan of life only on the assump- 



THE OBLIGATION OF CONTRACTS. 






tion that what has been promised be fulfilled. 
The moral obligation of contracts therefore pre- 
supposes that neither party deceives the other 
about the meaning of the stipulated transactions ; 
while it is the duty of each party carefully to 
weigh the compatibility of the same with his own 
circumstances in life. A contract which rests 
upon deception is therefore invalid ; one that has 
been entered into thoughtlessly remains proximately 
binding. 

It is further self-evident that he who has com- 
pelled it has no right to the fulfilment of a promise 
made under compulsion. But he who suffers him- 
self to be compelled is not thereby discharged of 
his obligation. If the content of the promise was 
in itself criminal, then of course it must not be 
fulfilled. But the matter is not put in order in 
that way. The rather does the other party bear 
the reproach of having, by means of the promise 
compelled, committed a fault which is not to be 
made good again in any way ; and, starting from 
which, the only means of coming again into accord 
with the moral laws is by the second transgres- 
sion of breaking one's word. In saying this, we 
do not demand that everybody withdraw himself 
from all compulsion with the sacrifice of his life ; 
but we merely recognize the human powerlessness 



90 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

which must bear its fate of not being able always 
to remain free from reproach. 

Another question is closely connected with the 
foregoing. All contracts have reference to trans- 
actions in the nearer or more remote future. But 
no one knows this future beforehand. It may 
shape itself so that the fulfilment of the contract 
becomes impossible, or an excessive burden ; or so 
that the previous purpose is altered. But the 
latter alone can never annul the contract ; for this 
is not concluded by two wills, but by two persons 
willing. Now just as the person in all other 
respects deports himself as the permanent subject, 
to whom all his own services are due, so must the 
person also, if there is to be any human life at all 
with rational ends, be security for the identity of 
its own will. *In the first two cases the obligation 
is, indeed, not altogether annulled ; but it is the 
moral duty of the other party to assist in bearing 
a mishap that is unexpected and independent of 
the will, and therefore to modify the contract. 
This will take place in the easiest manner if from 
the very first onward the permissibility of indem- 
nification in some other way is established, — for 
example, in society as it is actually constituted, 
in the form of a money equivalent. 

Finally, every contract is in itself limited to the 



THE LIMITATION OF CONTRACTS. gi 

persons who have concluded it ; and the turning 
aside of a demand which A has on B, so that it 
falls on a third person C, is only allowable in 
society, in individual cases, as a convenient meas- 
ure agreed upon for the abbreviation of business. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF SOCIETY. 



§ 47. The political totalities of states have origi- 
nated historically in manifold kinds, partly acci- 
dental and partly unnatural, and have set limits 
to each other. 

The lively feeling of this fact induced the in- 
quiry after the special meaning and right of these 
many forms, each of which endeavors to maintain 
itself against the others, and it thus produced 
the modern conception of ' society as of a multi- 
plicity of living individuals who are united for the 
common fulfilment of all their aims in life. In 
this sense the conception of ' society ' appeared to 
designate the really true moral institution to which 
the political form of the 'State' at best gave a 
definite and, under certain circumstances, necessary 
final form. 

Such society, accordingly, has at present no 
existence in fact outside of the existing states, 
and at most, its claims are carried into effect only 
by means of the power of these states. Never- 
theless, the general and uniform customs of com- 



THE AIMS OF SOCIETY. 93 

merce, which are now spread over the most diverse 
lands, as well as the organization of the Church, 
or even the security with which, in international 
trade, claims established by usage can calculate 
upon being satisfied, — all nevertheless show that 
even without any really political form, such a 
trustworthy union of men for comprehensive aims 
is possible. 

What flows from this conception of a ' society ' 
may therefore be considered as in fact the prin- 
cipal part of that which subsequently the ' state ' 
will have to organize and to protect. 

§ 48. In other times the entire human life was 
esteemed as a preparation for a superearthly life, 
of which men believed themselves to have knowl- 
edge : and on this account many obligations also, 
which had no purpose and no immediate signifi- 
cance for the earthly life, have passed over into 
those recognized by 'society.' 

We withdraw attention from such obligations as 
the foregoing, and consider society merely, on the 
one hand, as it is bound to the natural relations 
of the earth's surface, and, on the other hand, as 
it has merely striven to bring the freedom of each 
individual into agreement with the coexistence of 
the freedom of all others, the earthly aims in the 
life of one with those of all the others. 



94 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 49. In the same manner we decline to con- 
sider all other forms of a ' Doctrinaireism,' which 
demands that society constitute itself after a pat- 
tern discovered somewhere else or other. 

Thus it is altogether useless to call society 'the 
universal,' and to subordinate the persons, or rather 
their efforts, as 'particular.' No authority, which 
society would have to exercise over the individu- 
als, follows in the least degree from all this. For 
a general notion really expresses merely for our 
thinking in a brief way, what its particular exam- 
ples already are without it. That the general 
notion, on the contrary, would have some law- 
giving power by means of which it could make 
these particulars to be what they are assumed to 
be, does not follow from its logical nature as a 
' universal,' but must in each case be proved from 
the nature of the thing in a special way. In our 
case, society as ' the universal ' will have this 
authority merely so far as it is recognized as such 
a law-giving power by the individual persons of 
which it is composed. 

Moreover, the triflings of comparing society with 
a living organism, that is to say, that of man or 
of an animal ; and of making the functions of the 
latter the pattern for its regulations, are alto- 
gether fruitless. The essential difference is over- 



SOCIETY AND INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM. 95 

looked, that every living ' organism ' serves a single 
individual soul with very many wholly impersonal 
parts ; while in ' society ' many individual beings, 
each of which is an end to itself, only unite them- 
selves into a community which does not exist apart 
from them as a distinct being. 

We therefore insist upon this, that society must 
be comprehended, without any comparisons of it 
to something else, merely from its own occasions, 
needs, and aims, and must be regulated in accord- 
ance with them. 

§ 50. It is just because society is above all 
bound to leave in existence the freedom of individual 
persons, and merely make it compatible with that 
of all other persons, that its first duty appears to 
us to be, not a positive regulation which shall lead 
to a definite terminus, but the removal of all the 
hinderances from each other which are experienced 
by the different kinds of efforts of the individual 
persons in their life together. 

Society, therefore, interests itself first of all in 
the universal moral commands which hold good 
for all the intercourse of men, and endeavors to 
equalize the transgressions and the consequences 
of the transgressions of these laws. The first 
question then is, on what does that power of pun- 



g6 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ishment depend, which society imputes to itself in 
this relation ? 

§ 51. If acknowledgment be returned to a good 
will for beneficence exercised, and to an evil will 
some retributive evil in the onward march of 
things, then we are satisfied and find the world's 
course to be in order ; but if this retribution do 
not come in the onward march of things, still it 
is self-evident that we should discharge our debt 
of acknowledgment for the good deeds done us 
by similar good deeds. On the other hand the 
question arises : Whence do we derive the right 
to supplement the order of the world by stepping 
into its place, and to avenge the evil by the 
production of new evil, — namely, by the evil of 
punishment ? Even although we are never so well 
persuaded of the fact that a deed deserves such 
punishment, yet it does not follow from this that 
society has any justification at all for executing 
the punishment. It still remains, therefore, to 
seek for the origin of that right of punishment 
which society imputes to itself and denies to 
individuals. 

That this right sprung immediately from God, is 
not capable of historical demonstration ; and it 
remains a way of speaking that merely asseverates 



THE RIGHT OF PUNISHMENT. 97 

strongly but advances no proof that this right 
belongs to society. 

Just as little can society possess this right 
under the merely logical titles of the ' whole ' or 
the ' universal/ The rather does the question 
always recur, why such a right and such a duty 
should belong to it as being this determinate ' whole ' 
and ' universal/ 

The endeavor has further been made to deduce 
it immediately from the following ethical maxims : 
every transgression is a ' negation of the right ' ; the 
right must be reestablished by a ' second negation ' ; 
ours, however, is the duty to execute this work of 
reestablishing. On the contrary, it is to be said 
that ' negation of the right' would really be only an 
affirmation to the effect that the right does not hold 
valid. If, however, any one wishes to speak of an 
action which runs counter to the right, in this way, 
still the ' second negation' — since actions that have 
happened cannot be made not to have happened — 
is simply directed toward the improvement again of 
the disturbed condition, in a manner corresponding 
to the right. 

From the foregoing would ensue forthwith the 
duty of indemnification and the right of demanding 
it. If we further assume also the continued exis- 
tence of the bad will from which the transgression 



98 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

sprung, then there may follow an incentive toward 
the improvement of the transgressor, through whose 
repentance the contradiction to the ' idea of right ' 
would completely vanish. 

Now both these things we indeed desire ; but over 
and above this it is our belief that we are justified in 
a punishment, the reason for which obviously could 
not be derived from this mere act, in itself consid- 
ered, of * reestablishing the right.' But moreover it 
is a rather barren way of talking, to speak of a 
'deranging of the idea of right ': this idea can itself 
suffer nothing ; if therefore a special ' reestablish- 
ing ' is assumed still to be needed, we must inquire 
after the subjects who actually surfer through the 
alleged violation of the right. 

§ 52. The subjects just alluded to are exclusively 
individual living persons. Were these persons all so 
organized that they were incapable of feeling pleasure 
and pain, then it is self-evident that there would no 
longer exist in such a world any right of punish- 
ment ; since every action which might happen would 
be just as indifferent in character as every other. It 
is only the unhappy condition of feeling which takes 
place in the soul of the injured person that explains 
and forms the basis for new actions which aim to 
obviate the same. 



THE RIGHT OF PUNISHMENT. 99 

Now one is not psychologically in his previous 
condition again, if the injury suffered is merely com- 
pensated for ; but the recollection of a hostile attack 
directed against our personality remains ever a dis- 
turbance of the feelings until the offender, by an 
act of vengeance, is made sensible of the injustice 
of his attack. 

To this basis do we refer ultimately the right of 
punishment ; it belongs primarily to the individual 
and, indeed, on account of an infraction of his per- 
sonal rights. Therefore the individual has also the 
rights of forgiveness, — a thing which he would not 
have if every contradiction to a universal idea of 
right were directly that which provoked the primitive 
activity. Nor does that retribution satisfy the nat- 
ural sense, which the offender meets with through 
another (a third person) ; it seems necessary to retri- 
bution that the injured person himself inflict the 
punishment. And even in civilized conditions the 
disinclination has maintained itself to give over 
injuries which touch personal honor to retribution 
by means of a general tribunal 

Such immediate personal impulse toward avenging 
wrong is at the present time in ' society' subordi- 
nated to the common judgment and will. On the 
one hand, it is not merely the one directly injured 
but also the whole of society that is disturbed in 



IOO PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

respect to its feeling of justice, and that has the 
same claim to take part in this avenging. On the 
other hand, the powerlessness that frequently exists 
ought to be supplemented by the force of the whole 
community. It is chiefly, however, the welfare of 
society, as well as its own consciousness of right, 
which stipulates for security against the injustice to 
which the passion, the caprice, the perverted excita- 
bility, and the false suspicion of the injured party 
might lead. Hence the demand to surrender the 
right of avenging and helping one's self, and to desire 
only that satisfaction which, according to the unpre- 
judiced judgment of the common consciousness of 
right, the actual matter of the fact of injury requires. 
This tempering of the natural impulse to ven- 
geance seems to be the sole title of right, under 
which a power of punishment belongs to society ; 
and, of course, in the first instance, with respect to 
those who have already subjected themselves to its 
laws. 

§ 53. From an ethical point of view, the object of 
punishment will appear, primarily, to be the bad 
disposition, — not the deed, which of itself is a 
merely physical event. 

But it is nevertheless forthwith to be observed, 
that to pass an objective and thoroughly just judg- 



LIMITS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT. IOI 

ment as to the total moral worth of a man, is never 
an affair that belongs to men, but is to be committed 
to God only. Every individual may have such a judg- 
ment as his subjective opinion, and may express it so 
far as he is willing to bear the risk as to how his 
expression is received. On the contrary, it remains 
an unjustifiable arrogance, in case any tribunal what- 
ever were willing to proclaim such a judgment as 
objective truth. Only so much of the disposition falls 
under the province of human judgment, as has been 
objectified, in unmistakable manner, in some deed. 

In the same connection, however, it must be 
further considered, that a mitigation of the judgment 
quite naturally takes place, in case the execution of 
the deed is hindered by external circumstances. We 
may have the moral conviction that the bad disposi- 
tion would have brought the deed to an accomplish- 
ment : but we never know this certainly ; and this 
fact must be interpreted in favor of the transgressor, 
as well as the fact on the other side, that the failure 
of the actual injury diminishes the need of compen- 
sation. 

Further, since it is not the effects of a blind 
natural force but only the actions of a person which 
can be punished, it is self-evident that regard 
must be had to the question, whether the doer has 
been in a responsible state of mind. But nothing 



102 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

less than the proof that his spiritual functions are 
disturbed to the degree of a false apprehension of the 
most ordinary matter of fact, would securely free him 
from all imputation. On the other hand, it is an 
ill applied ingenuity to intermix here metaphysical 
speculations about the freedom of the will, and to 
hold it possible to get an objective proof upon the 
point whether a certain person has possessed such 
freedom, and to what degree he has possessed it. 
The judgment of men does not at all depend upon 
the answer to this question. It has merely to do 
with the inquiry, whether such a person has been in 
that condition of mind in which, from experience, we 
are conscious of being, when we easily perpetrate 
actions of which we do not ourselves approve. And 
our conviction on this point really furnishes nothing 
more than a practical reason for ameliorating our judg- 
ment, — subject as it is to error; but it cannot in 
any event pretend theoretically to establish in a 
scientific way a psychological condition of mind, or 
to decide the aforesaid metaphysical question. 

The other view, which considers every transgres- 
sion as an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence 
of the natural disposition, would consistently lead only 
to this, that every act of personal vengeance also, or 
every mild or severe punishment whatever, when 
decreed by society, must just as much be regarded 



THE KINDS OF PUNISHMENT. IO3 

as an unavoidable consequence of its natural dispo- 
sition. 

§ 54. Neither the kind nor the degree of pun- 
ishment admits, as mere matter of fact, of being 
determined according to the principle of a requital 
of like by like (the 'Jus talionis') ; and even as a 
rule this principle is false. The case is by no means 
one in which we have to do with repairing defi- 
nite conditions, if they have suffered destruction, by 
like conditions ; or with compensating for the dis- 
turbance of one condition by a condition exactly 
opposite of like kind. The ground of punishment is 
simply the discord or disturbance of society, which 
is equalized only by the consciousness of some ill 
returned upon the evil doer. It is in itself, however, 
a matter of indifference by what means this evil is 
produced. On this point secondary considerations 
of conformity to an end and of custom are decisive. 

On the whole three kinds of punishment in 
all are at our disposal : they touch either the 
property, or the liberty, or the corporal life. 

The first are fitting in cases where we have to do, 
not with a violation of ethical principles, but of a 
legal statute or a conventional arrangement. 

Punishments affecting liberty are to be under- 
stood, first, as measures of security ; and as such can 



104 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

really be only temporary. The authority to exclude 
any one from free human intercourse, and to limit 
the use of his powers for a life-time, cannot be yield- 
ed to any human society whatever; and least of all 
on any other than the foregoing ground. We readily 
overlook the doubtfulness of such a use of power 
for the sole reason that it is revocable ; and we there- 
fore raise a special contest merely over the legitimacy 
of the punishment of death, which is not revocable. 
All the opinions that are set up touching the 
latter, both for and against, appear unwilling to 
concede the real point of the difficulty. This point 
consists in the fact that the entire right of society to 
punish cannot be justified from any ethical princi- 
ple or any alleged divine commission whatever, 
but is always a species of usurpation ; it is, however, 
such an usurpation, of course, as does not practically 
admit of being avoided, — it admits of being theo- 
retically placed on a good basis, or not. The ques- 
tion really ought, therefore, to be not at all, whether 
we possess a demonstrable 'right' to ordain this pun- 
ishment, but merely the following : How far do we 
trust ourselves to exercise this right of punishment 
— of constantly doubtful origin as it is — without 
coming too much into contradiction with our com- 
mon moral feeling. It is obvious that the abolition 
of the death-penalty is always a worthy object of 



SOCIETY AS A BONDAGE. 105 

desire ; but whether it is practicable, — on that 
point, the answers will constantly vary according to 
the different periods of time and their culture. For 
they depend, as was said, not upon theoretical prin- 
ciples of invariable validity, but only upon the ruder 
or more refined conscience and, besides, upon the 
greater or less need of the times. 

§ 55. What we call human society, as was previous- 
ly observed, has not existed hitherto solely under 
the form of individual states that have had an histori- 
cal origin ; nor does it by any means correspond to 
the otherwise w r ell-known conception of a society 
made up by entering into it voluntarily and for alto- 
gether definite ends. Every individual is born into 
his relations in life, into his age, and his nation, 
without assistance and consent of his own ; and he 
finds his whole subsequent life already burdened by 
obligations for the protection and education of his 
childhood, as well as limited by the rules of a social 
organism, to which his accord is not asked but is 
presumed in such a manner that the expression of 
resistance on his part appears at once as a crime. 

Since, this historical enchainment is the indispen- 
sable basis of human life, it can only be said that 
the conception of ' human society ' is an ideal, to 
which we, where it is a matter de lege ferenda, must 



106 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

approximate our conditions in such manner that the 
willing accord of the individuals, which could not 
be asked, may be gained for the conditions at least 
in a supplementary way. But, nevertheless, in cases 
where such an accord cannot be attained, he who 
is persistently of a different mind must at least be 
left free to withdraw, — after discharging his debt for 
the good deeds of which he has received his share, — 
and so to emancipate himself from the fate which 
has assigned him to this definite historical position. 

§ 56. But the positive tasks which society must 
set before itself as its adduced aim, do not all con- 
sist merely in leaving unimpaired the freedom of 
every individual so far as it is compatible with that 
of the rest ; for this would be most effectually at- 
tained in case one were to abstract from all inter- 
course with others. The impulse which leads to 
combination lies in the necessity of supplementing 
the force of the individual by that of others, without 
which the aims of life are not completely attainable : 
and here belong not merely the conceivable advan- 
tages which one receives from another, but above all 
the social intercourse itself, without which a really 
human development is inconceivable. 

The question now arises, what arrangement so- 
ciety must hit upon for this end ; or, still previous 



ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY. IO7 

to this question : Must society proceed at all in this 
matter, and not be satisfied with defining more pre- 
cisely that which originates of itself in the course of 
life ? 

Now it is perfectly obvious that no theory, which 
should not have learned from history to know the 
whole compass of human needs, of the means for 
their satisfaction, as well as of the actual habits and 
sentiments of men, would sketch a priori the picture 
of a satisfactory organization of society. Without 
hesitation, therefore, we accord with the other axiom, 
that the free impulse of every individual ought to 
seek its own direction, and that it ought to be 
left entrusted to the interest which the impulse itself 
has in its own advancement, to find a place in so- 
ciety by its own achievements ; and, further, that 
the problem of the latter consists simply in this, — 
to construct for the organization thus originated, the 
necessary protection and exclusion of the conflicts 
that arise from the counter striving of the different 
individuals (compare § 50). 

Now the disadvantage of civilization, which is con- 
nected with the business advantage of the far- 
reaching division of industries, is not to be denied : 
just as the achievements themselves are improved by 
limitation to a quite definite branch of industry, so 
in the same degree does the breadth of the spiritual 



108 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

horizon, the capacity to judge of the world and to 
have the enjoyment possible from it, decrease. We 
cannot return to the dream of a 'state of nature.' 
It appears dazzling to us merely in case we for a 
time think ourselves back into it ; — and this, while in 
the possession of all the spiritual culture, all the reflec- 
tion and meditative tenderness of feeling, the whole 
of which we bring with us only from our civilized con- 
dition. As to that life of nature in itself considered, 
it would put us in a position pretty completely like 
that of the animals. 

The only thing left, therefore, is to mitigate the 
aforesaid unavoidable dissimilarity of men. This 
cannot take place in such manner that the same 
social value should be adjudged to all. Unavoidably 
will greater honor be attached to the finer, and less 
to the coarser, form of labor. A difference of posi- 
tions in this social estimate of honors is, accordingly, 
wholly unavoidable. 

So much the more must care be taken that at 
least an equality of rights before the law be secured 
to all, — in all relations which concern them simply 
as men. 

It must, in the second place, be a fundamental 
principle that the transition from each class of society 
into a higher, shall stand open to every one who 
believes himself able to deserve it by his own 



INSTRUCTION AND SUPPORT. IO9 

achievements. Everything is therefore inadmissible 
which recalls indestructible distinctions of caste 
that belong to an earlier time. 

Finally, such a right would be of no service, if it 
could not be used. Now just because the division 
of labor which is necessary to society, depresses the 
spiritual culture of particular classes, it is — in the 
third place — the duty of society to mitigate this 
evil condition for which it is at fault ; and, in fact, 
to do this by taking care to offer sufficient instruc- 
tion to all, and by arranging this compulsorily as 
in duty required, in order to protect the future 
generation against the unwisdom of its ancestors and 
the results of its own unwisdom. 

§ 57. A common ethical obligation to benevolence 
rests upon every individual with reference to every 
other (§ 29) ; but only at the moment of a threaten- 
ing danger, the obligation to an act of assistance, 
which, nevertheless, as a matter of mere right can 
never be raised to the height of personal self-sac- 
rifice. 

All long-continued support, on the contrary, ought to 
serve only as an incitement to self-help ; and society 
is obligated to such support only in so far as the 
needy person himself has made himself a valid mem- 
ber of society by the position which he assumes in it. 



HO PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



In this relation complaint is to be made, that the 
spirit of our time has destroyed all those organiza- 
tions of society into smaller wholes, which were in 
former times the natural source of this kind of 
obligations and claims. Here belongs the relation 
of domestics, which has come to be no longer, — as 
it once was, — a connection for all the events of life, 
but (especially through the fault of servants them- 
selves, who prefer for each single piece of work done 
a single fee) an utterly loose relation, from which 
no claims arise to a lasting partnership. 

Here belong, further, all the corporate unions, — 
to wit, such as were founded upon definite occupa- 
tions ; guilds and fraternities, which held to an 
honor of rank, and on this very account felt the nat- 
ural duty of supporting their own members ; but 
just in the same way also the occupants of the 
same dwelling, who, united with each other by 
common home and memories, were the natural 
source of the expected support. 

It is true that many abuses, and especially their 
bigotted exclusiveness toward others, did not permit 
these corporate arrangements to continue longer in 
existence unaltered : it is matter of complaint, how- 
ever, that nothing has taken their place ; that rather 
every element of society has become, although seem- 
ingly independent, yet in fact at the same time iso- 



THE BENEFICENCE OF SOCIETY. Ill 

lated through its freedom to follow any craft and to 
emigrate without paying a tax. And now there is 
no longer any place from which help might be hoped 
for except the great whole of ' society/ This, to be 
sure, sees its duty, and by manifold institutions — 
for example, all possible kinds of assurances, sav- 
ings-banks, and similar contrivances — in a business- 
like way and on a large scale carries on the works of 
a benign activity ; and, accordingly, earns for itself 
a right also to require that it shall be made use of, 
in order not to be compelled, when misfortune arises, 
to render in a fitful way assistance that is sudden 
and difficult to furnish. 

It is to be conceded that the common care 
of the poor, also administered in such business- 
like fashion, can show better results of a material 
kind than private beneficence ; on the other 
hand, this impulse to make mechanical, every- 
thing to which we are morally obligated, and to 
care for it at third or fourth hand, cannot pos- 
sibly serve as advantageous to the culture and 
warmth of moral character. 

§ 58. All men have a like claim, not to the 
enjoyment of life, but to being allowed to try 
for as many good things as they are able to de- 
serve. The personal limitations of rights, which 



112 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

hinder directly such free striving, have almost 
completely ceased to exist ; but indirectly bar- 
riers still remain, which make burdensome the 
actual use of the rights to which the title is 
conceded. 

These barriers lie especially in the preponderance 
of hereditary capital, and have in recent times 
been made palpable mainly by the development of 
the vast industry, which, working with vast means, 
by the greater uniformity, precision and cheap- 
ness of its massive products, curtails the ability 
of the free small trades to yield returns ; and so 
compels the latter, either to limit themselves to 
the work of accommodation, or else to enter into 
the service of the great contractors and await 
from them the determination of life's destiny. 
The evil conditions that arise from this are well 
known. On the other hand, the advantages of 
large capital and large enterprise in comparison 
with all pigmy economies are so obvious, that 
attempts at improvement should in any event 
not recommend a return to the latter (perchance 
in the form of a senseless division of all the 
means disposable), but can only have their issue 
in holding firmly to the aforesaid principle of 
large enterprise, while seeking another subject 
for it, — instead of private persons, society itself. 



THE GROUNDS OF SOCIALISM. II3 

The above-mentioned thought — which is at least 
debateable — of a genuine and yet moderate i Social- 
ism,' would therefore consist in this, that we are not 
willing to let society shape itself, whether well or ill, 
out of the mere concurrence of perfectly free individ- 
ual undertakings in a purely secondary way ; but 
first of all the ordering of society ought to be 
established, and it ought to offer in its better 
organization a suitable place to every individual. 

§ 59. Let it be assumed that the question does 
not concern the reshaping of present conditions 
into the new form of society, but that we have 
perfectly free range to establish the latter, and 
then the proposals, which are perhaps worthy of 
consideration, would be as follows : 

Private property in land does not exist, but all 
rights of property belong to society, — a thought 
which merely carries further what has taken place 
in the course of history ; namely, the ever increas- 
ing limitation of the arbitrary disposal of property 
in land without regard to, and to the injury of, 
the whole. 

The cultivation of the land would be carried on 
by society, in accordance with a complete plan 
previously prepared by its directing organs, look- 
ing toward a reward of labor. It would be possible 



114 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

in this case to fix such reward firmly and equitably ; 
because exact knowledge of every requisite in that 
direction is presupposed, and likewise of the value 
of all the products of industry, which, together with 
the original production, would have also to be dis- 
tributed according to a general plan for the neces- 
sities of the whole community. 

And now the way may stand open to the indi- 
vidual, to choose for his calling one of these different 
tasks of the society ; and in all the rest of his life 
which he does not devote to such labor, nothing 
further would be prescribed to his individual prefer- 
ence. 

We then further conceive of common harvests 
and of their conversion into money in the interest 
of society : first, division of the necessary support 
for life among all ; then, laying by in store of what 
is necessary for the common ends of society (ad- 
ministration, instruction, mental enjoyments of every 
kind), and of what is necessary as reserve fund ; 
finally, further division of the surplus (which it is 
customary to imagine abundant) as the free prop- 
erty of individuals. 

The advantages, which are conceived of as coming 
from this arrangement, are the following : the 
abolition of the dependence of one individual upon 
the discernment and the humanity of another 



ALLEGED BENEFITS OF SOCIALISM. 1 1 5 

individual ; abolition of all competition which 
is essentially speculation in the inferior knowledge 
of circumstances had by others, or in their 
ignorance ; abolition of the inequality between 
production and need ; securing of the means of 
subsistence for the individual. 

For it is to be conceded that the outgrowths which 
we condemn at the present time, are by no means con- 
nected with the aims of Socialism. Neither hatred 
towards religion, nor barbarity of customs, insen- 
sibility toward all beauty, nor envy toward every 
advantage belonging to some one else, is a conse- 
quence of these theories. On the contrary, they very 
frequently in their programs promise to care for all 
possible spiritual interests, out of the property of 
such a society, in a very generous way ; — for sup- 
port and instruction, for enjoyment of nature, for 
rewarding inventions. They even, for the rest, do 
not intend to disturb private life ; but (in this case, 
too, solely by means of the large business of the 
society, — for example, by 'barracking' in all man- 
ner of public dwellings, by feeding from common 
kitchens, etc.) they suppose they will be able to 
alleviate it. 

§ 60. The fundamental thought of the above- 
mentioned proposals has already been put into 



Il6 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

execution in manifold fashion ; for example, in co- 
operative associations, in voluntary trades unions, 
in stock enterprises. But in all these cases we have 
to do with entering into such combinations in a 
voluntary way, and retaining freedom to withdraw ; 
and this, too, for a special object, while in other 
regards the whole conduct of life remains un- 
disturbed thereby. 

That which one might readily find pleasing under 
such circumstances, would be much harder to endure, 
if the whole society, into which one is born, and 
from which one cannot withdraw, desired to exercise 
such authoritative power in reference to all the rela- 
tions of life. A thorough-going character of peda- 
gogic officialism would, however, mark the aforesaid 
form of society, and in the soul of adults would expe- 
rience from the beginning onward the resistance of 
individuality. It is moreover doubtful whether, in 
case the business and the support of all were 
determined on the part of the whole, the fidelity to 
duty on which hope is rested, would actually occur. 

§ 61. The societies which were similarly consti- 
tuted, so far as they have actually existed, have 
always been limited, have had others competing 
with them, and accordingly some spur from rivalry. 
But the socialistic projects would in consistency 



DIFFICULTIES OF SOCIALISM. 117 

extend to a cosmopolitan union of all humanity; 
and since this is in effect impracticable, would at 
least extend to large communities of people, within 
which the individual would find little incentive for 
rivalry with other societies unknown to him, and on 
the contrary much temptation to rely upon the 
industry of others. And against this Socialism 
would promise no easy redress. 

On the one hand, it is — to begin with — very 
difficult to determine what is the proportionate 
and equitable (answering to equity) reward of 
industry for what is done in different crafts, and 
thoroughly to guard against the mutual envy of 
these classes of employment. Yet more difficult is it 
within the same calling, suitably to reward the actual 
work accomplished. In society, as at present con- 
stituted, the judgment concerning the worth of a 
work is indirectly expressed by eager demands for 
it or by lack of purchasers ; and it is on this account 
not offensive. In the aforesaid other society, it is 
counted on that every body will oversee his fellow ; 
and, finally, a committee to decide will utter an 
official judgment concerning the behavior and 
achievement of the different laborers. Such an 
official censorship, which concerns not the work but 
the person directly, is allowable only in pedagogics ; 
but wherever it has been actualized in society, 



Il8 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

as composed of adults, it has been the fruitful 
source of discontent and revolt. 

It is further extremely doubtful, whether the 
somewhat large number of jurisdictions engaged in 
carrying on the business, of which it would be 
necessary to make use, would possess — even though 
they should be selected for that purpose — a satis- 
factory oversight, the necessary probity, prudence, 
and gift of invention, which in such a case is the 
more necessary for the well-being of the whole, the 
less free play is left to individual talent. It is doubt- 
ful, to wit, whether such a society would take 
pleasure in bearing with and supporting the labors 
of an inventive genius, which are so frequently 
employed for a long time in investigations without 
result, and then all at once significantly make speed 
with the denouement. 

Finally, touching other things — for example, 
instruction, nursing the sick, the general culture and 
the arts — we should really have hope for the 
advantageous things which Socialism promises in 
this regard, only in case there existed a universal 
magnanimity. But this, if it were to come to pass, 
would be able to produce exactly the same results, 
too, without entrusting to society such a complete 
and hazardous transformation. 

It may therefore be asserted that a helpful use of 



NECESSITY FOR THE STATE. II9 

these principles is to be expected only to a limited 
extent ; that, on the contrary, a complete ordering of 
society after this pattern, which really proceeded 
from the economic care for support in itself alone 
considered, would even in the most favorable case 
not lead much further than the securing of this end ; 
while all the higher problems of human culture 
always require the powerful interference of sig- 
nificant individualities ; and, besides, for the restraint 
of the bad (a matter to which the aforesaid theory 
pays too little regard), an authority is quite indispen- 
sable, which is much more punitive, which has had an 
historical origin, and is not modifiable according to 
every passing preference of society. Such authority 
we recognize only in the form of the ' State/ 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF THE STATE. 

§ 62. The conception of society, in itself consid- 
ered, designates merely a union of living persons for 
mutual protection and furtherance of their well-being ; 
and it is only from this end that all its authority, as 
well as the limitations of the same, are derived. 
Society first becomes a state by the possession of 
a fixed territory, not merely as productive capital 
but as its historical home ; and, further, by its form- 
ing one people which, through like spiritual endow- 
ment, like speech and like traditions, is united into a 
whole, in living contrast with other wholes ; and, 
finally, by feeling itself to be, not merely the sum 
of the living persons, and rather considering the past 
and future members of the race as constantly 
belonging to it in company. As a state, therefore, 
it hits upon its forms of organization, not barely for 
the end of momentary prosperity ; and, further, not 
as such that they could be altered at every moment 
to meet the same end. It rather holds itself obli- 
gated to maintain a definite form of spiritual culture 
in coherence with the past, and to deliver it over to 
the future. The life of the state, accordingly, de- 



ORIGIN OF THE MAGISTRACY. 121 

pends upon very many cooperating factors ; striving 
for prosperity, filial piety towards its memories, pride 
of present culture, and self-surrender to a definite 
stamp of the ideal. 

§ 63. From the very fact that in the state the real 
subject to which the authority of shaping the entire 
life is entrusted, is not at all felt to consist in the sum- 
total of those alive at the time, but in the people as 
perpetuating itself through various generations, it 
follows that in this way a special instrument comes 
into the possession of such sum-total of living per- 
sons; — an instrument which is destined to defend 
the permanent historical conception of this definite 
state against the changeable decrees of the genera- 
tions that succeed each other. Such an instrument 
is the Magistracy. 

In a mere 'society/ the above-mentioned conception 
does not have, at least, the same significance. In it 
there are only deputized agents of the common will, 
or of the temporary majority ; and their official right, 
as well as the rule for directing their behavior, has 
no other source than this variable will. The concep- 
tion of the i magistracy/ on the other hand, is signifi- 
cant to a certain extent of the common conscience of 
the people, which is made thereby to confront the 
changeable will of the individuals, precisely as within 



122 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the spirit of the individual the consciousness of 
moral laws that are universally binding confronts the 
momentary frames of mind. The i magistracy' is, 
therefore, not a deputy of the people, or the mere 
manager of its business ; but in contrast with it lays 
claim to a higher power which holds its authority 
independently of every individual will. 

What is said above is true of the conception of the 
magistracy, quite apart from the question, in what 
way the changes of persons who are to represent 
this independent authority of the office are deter- 
mined. 

§ 64. We consider the state only as a firmly cir- 
cumscribed final form which a national ' folk-life ! 
must assume ; — a form, accordingly, which is not 
previously established in abstracto and to which every 
such ' folk-life ' must subsequently conform. But we 
admit as a matter of course that, in the general simi- 
larity of all human life, the different forms of the 
state also must permit of being brought under certain 
general notions. 

Of the varieties that are well known, the Democracy 
stands nearest to the conception of a mere society. 
The living community is here the completely sovereign 
agent of the state, which esteems itself authorized to 
make every change in the conditions of the state. 



LEGISLATION IN DEMOCRACY. 123 

In good examples of the democracy, it is really- 
only the laws which correspond to the conception of 
magistracy as we have just established that con- 
ception ; and even they only so long as a piety, his- 
torically perpetuated, honors them as the genuine 
expression of the national spirit. Nevertheless, 
since laws necessarily require changes in the course 
of time, the danger of constant innovation is so much 
the more imminent for democracy according as the 
existing magistracies are valid solely as deputies of 
the collective will, and possess no higher authority 
to protect the content of the permanent thought 
of the state against the aforesaid changeable will. 

This relation, that the state nowhere confronts the 
individual citizens as a self-existent power personified, 
but always appears merely as what they make of it, 
is really more characteristic of democracy than the 
other assertion, that in it " the people makes and 
administers its own laws." Apart from the fact, that 
the female sex in no case, and adults always only 
when they have attained a limit of age arbitrarily 
fixed, are legally entitled to citizenship, there has 
also uniformly existed beside the full citizens a pro- 
letariat incapable of having a voice in its affairs. It 
is, therefore, not 'the people' which rules itself, but 
always only a selected portion of them, which most 



124 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

contribute to the consistence of society and, on this 
account, appear privileged to represent it. 

But even they, in matters of a certain degree of 
intricacy, can after all do nothing but follow the 
demagogical persuasions of individual counsellors. 
But the decision which they reach will seldom be 
uniform ; it will rather be the opinion of the majority, 
which may be alike pernicious, in case it is led in 
different affairs by different principles, or in the tran- 
sacting of all affairs by one and the same interest. 

Still the before-mentioned way of deciding cases, 
by the number of votes, is not to be dispensed with. 
A weighing of votes would presuppose an arbitrary 
monarchical censorship, or an estimate on grounds of 
probability, so that the votes of certain classes of citi- 
zens would be less esteemed than those of other classes. 
This would issue in a favoring of single classes of 
society ; and such a thing may be useful, but it does 
not lie in the mere conception of a ' Democracy/ 

§ 65. In connection with many disadvantages, 
democracy contains the truth that the state can in 
no event be anything more than the final form which 
the living society gives to itself; and that, conse- 
quently, its organization can possess, as over against 
the changeable necessities, no absolutely definitive, 
unchangeable authority. 



TRUE THOUGHT OF DEMOCRACY. 125 

The foregoing view must be maintained, in oppo- 
sition to the doctrines which (compare § 49) seek 
to find somewhere or other mystical types for the 
organization of the state, such as lie outside of the 
earthly life and its necessities. The state is neither 
an image of the Trinity, nor of the human organism, 
nor an exhibition of any profound relations belonging 
to the logical concept ; but it is simply a practical 
institution for earthly prosperity, and for that kind 
of cultivation of which our race can have experience 
on the earth. Every institution — no matter how 
magnificent a mystical significance it might have — 
would still be of indifferent value, if it were of no use 
in life ; and would necessarily have to be transformed 
as soon as it should begin to work injury. 

In so far is this fundamental thought of democracy 
— that the state must take its directions from the 
people — justified; but it is doubtful whether de- 
mocracy as a form of the state is the best adapted to 
fulfil the thought. It has need for its continued 
existence, in large measure, of the most perfect virtue 
in its citizens : where this prerequisite is historically 
wanting, democracy least of all affords a pledge for 
an equitable development of society. 

§ 66. The complete opposite of democracy — Mon- 
archy — does not consist essentially in the unity of 



126 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

the ruling power, but in the fact that this power 
rules at all, — that is to say, is no longer a mere 
deputy of the will of society, but derives its authority 
from a higher source of right. 

Now, as far as natural right goes, no man has any 
claim to lordship over others. Only antiquity could 
derive this claim from the divine descent of the rul- 
ing race. Our modern form of apprehending the 
matter is founded upon the conception of legitimacy ; 
— that is to say, upon the assumption that a right 
which does not exist by nature can be gained his- 
torically, and this by means of an earlier race, whether 
made subject by force, or out of gratitude for benefits 
received, having intrusted its leadership to a certain 
family ; and upon the assumption that now, since 
society does not make itself over new by sudden 
leaps, later generations gradually grow up into these 
relations, involuntarily owe them many obligations, 
and on this account even without renewed express 
recognition sanction the ascendency of their rulers. 

Such psychologically comprehensible events would, 
nevertheless, not make the esteem for monarchy per- 
fectly secure, unless there also lay in the interest of 
the community composing the state, some need to 
which this historical habitude corresponds. 

The conviction that every citizen constantly has 
both the right and the duty of concerning himself 



GROUNDS FOR THE MONARCHY. \2J 

about the common affairs, was an intelligible one for 
the ancient democracies, which rolled off all the labor 
of life upon the slaves, and which therefore consti- 
tuted substantially a tyrannical lordship of a select 
society over many unfortunates. Among modern 
peoples the other wish must predominate ; — the wish, 
that is, to avoid the large amount of fruitless or perni- 
cious labor which, among a population that must be 
supported by its own industry, would originate from 
participation in public affairs that are imperfectly 
understood, and from the struggle for the first place. 
This first place, especially, must by a certain 
natural necessity be occupied in such manner that it 
can never be the object of ambition ; and the primary 
consideration in fact is simply that it be occupied 
indubitably, and not how well it be occupied. That 
the most worthy should always rule, is a pious wish, 
but altogether- impracticable ; because it would either 
impute to society a prophetic gift in discovering this 
one most worthy, or the patience to judge of the 
matter according to the result, and therefore to put 
up with the strife of the different claimants, to the 
prejudice of its undisturbed development, until a 
decision is reached. 

§ 67. It is only as ' representative of the state ' 
that we have considered the monarch ; and, more 



128 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

specifically, as is obvious, the hereditary monarch. 
In the ancient Oriental despotisms, — a fact to which 
a bare allusion is here made, — he has quite another 
appearance ; as absolute master, source of all right 
and supreme judge, as educator and prophet, as sole 
possessor of all property, therefore as 'lord of the 
manor ' in the most unlimited sense. 

All such immoderate claims have long since been 
forgotten. There is left to the chief head of the 
state, essentially, nothing more than a great number 
of honorary prerogatives which are primarily with- 
out practical result, and are valid simply as the 
4 state-idea ' ; they are, however, never wholly worth- 
less, but are very frequently of extreme importance 
as soon as this in itself empty form is vitalized by the 
personal adherence of the people. But, besides, 
there belong to the chief head" of the state simply 
the right and duty of inciting the different branches 
of the state-life, of maintaining them in mutual com- 
bination, and of nominating the organs which are 
necessary for carrying on its affairs (§ 79). 

§ 68. In a complete Despotism the irresponsible 
and changeable will of an individual would directly 
constitute the power of the state. If it must be, for 
reasons easily intelligible, entrusted to a number of 
substitutes to exercise, then these are either mere 



NEED OF STATE-MINISTERS. 1 29 

executors of a single command, or, in case their busi- 
ness is a permanent one, the same all-sided arbitrary 
power belongs to them in relation to a definite ter- 
ritory as to the supreme lord in relation to the 
whole. 

From such a kind of substitutionary action all mod- 
ern states are distinguished by the fact, that they 
recognize an independence of the life of the state 
also, in contrast with that of the sovereign, and a 
division — grounded in reality — of this life into dif- 
ferent branches, each of which follows its own pecu- 
liar appropriate norms, that are independent of the 
will as well of the chief head of the state as of all 
other individuals. 

Herein alone is involved the conception of the 
office as not constituted for the persons, but rather 
as that for which the persons are sought and placed 
under obligations. Accordingly, instead of the afore- 
said unlimited alter-ego y there are substituted in the 
last instance the different ministers, each bound to 
the right of his office, but independent in pursuance 
of this right even to a wide extent. 

§ 69. The first and most indispensable part of the 
administration of the state is the care of Justice. 

It is necessary on this point to recollect that mere 
custom, habit, and tradition, perchance suffice in 



I30 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

order to determine the forms of intercourse which 
are necessary even for a civilized life. But they do 
not suffice to settle the innumerable cases of contest 
over the possession and use of things in an equitable 
way. It is to be regarded as an historical benefit, 
that the modern world has inherited the Roman 
science of right : — that is, such a science as, without 
being prepossessed by religious, poetic, or national 
prejudices, apprehends the intercourse of men in 
affairs wholly in its sober meaning; but at the same 
time with such keen reflection that the evident points 
of view appropriate to the nature of the affairs are 
gained, according to which the decision that is of 
itself equitable may be discovered wherever the occa- 
sions arise, and quite apart from all the regards of a 
piety that does not strictly belong to the matter in 
hand. It is not the single propositions about rights, 
but the science of rights, which it produced (and, 
especially, in high perfection with respect to private 
justice) that has been of advantage for the discovery, 
even under wholly new relations of life, of a justice 
which corresponded with the nature of these relations 
themselves, and which was independent of temporary 
presuppositions, of the then prevalent religious and 
social sentiments. 

In itself considered every proposition about rights, 
although it be indisputably correct, is of course 



IDEA OF JUSTICE PER SB. I3I 

simply a scientific truth which can attain validity in 
practical life only in case it is either itself raised to 
the position of a law by a definite act of legislation, 
or else the scientific whole to which it belongs as a 
part is chosen to be the basis of rights. 

Now although a similarly classical science is want- 
ing with respect to criminal and civil justice, yet the 
modern acts of legislation even on these points are 
indebted to the science of rights for a large number 
of the mitigations of that justice — so passionate and 
dependent upon momentary frames of mind — which 
was exercised in earlier times in these domains of 
law. 

At any rate, the conviction belongs to the modern 
consciousness, that just as there is a justice which 
holds good per se, so also the care of justice must be 
exercised independently of the will of the ruling head 
as well as of that of different parties. Access to the 
sources of justice must, accordingly, remain unpro- 
hibited for every one. Judges should be deposed 
only by means of judicial judgment itself; no one 
should be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of his 
natural judge, — that is to say, from the one to whom 
the constitution of the land has once assigned him. 
No exceptional courts should be erected, except in 
cases where danger to the state compels the temporary 
substitution of speedy and energetic measures for the 



132 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

normal administration, — and then without retro- 
active force. Finally, it must be possible for the 
individual to obtain satisfaction, even against the 
state, as soon as he is injured by its behavior. 

§ 70. Now the essential problem of the state is not 
barely the adjustment of injustice when committed, 
but the establishment of the positive benefits of 
general prosperity, the needs of which are changing 
with time, but likewise changing in such manner that 
most frequently the desires for improvement which 
are induced thereby are conflicting, or at least not in 
harmony, over the choice of the means for their 
fulfilment. 

Now it is, on the one hand, to be recognized with- 
out qualification that the state has come into exist- 
ence for the sake of men, and not they for its sake. 
There will always be in society, therefore, a party of 
advance which demands with justice the abolition of 
conditions that have become out of place. But it is 
just as certain that the state as such should not seek 
momentary prosperity at the sacrifice of historical 
memories and obligations ; that it has rather the right 
to maintain the existing condition in force against the 
pressure for innovation. The whole problem would 
therefore resolve itself into this, — not to allow the 
natural conflict of opinions and parties to become 



NO THEORETICALLY ' BEST ' STATE. 1 33 

uncontrollable, but to discover a form of ' constitution* 
which guarantees to both parties the possibility of 
arranging matters with each other by way of a 
righteous agreement, and of uniting for each epoch 
upon the proper new shaping of existing relations. 

The principal meaning of the foregoing statement 
is, that it is quite idle and foolish to wish to set up 
a ' best ' constitution of the state, such as must hold 
good unchangeably in its entire organization for all 
times. The i best' will rather be just that one which 
contains the most successful regulations for con- 
stantly introducing in correct forms the permanent 
alterations which existing relations call for, without 
sudden leap or concussion. 

§ 71. A certain accomplishment of the task 
aforesaid may without doubt take place at each 
moment by means of the spirit of individuals. 
Nevertheless, since such historical good-fortune is 
not to be counted upon, the collective intelligence 
of the people must be made serviceable in carrying 
out the end of the state. 

Three formal conditions, without which a constitu- 
tion is scarcely conceivable, belong to this matter : 
free communication of thoughts (only of late suffi- 
ciently possible by means of the press), in order, 
previous to all attempt at deeds, to call forth a com- 



134 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

parison, correction, and specializing of opinions ; next, 
a right of assembly, in order that a decision also may 
result from like opinions ; finally, an unobstructed 
(also collective) right of petition, in order to bring 
about the accomplishment of the conclusions arrived 
at by way of a righteous decision. 

But these three formal concessions would be worth- 
less without certain real preconditions necessary to 
their useful employment. Such preconditions lie 
principally in the formation of political parties. 

§ 72. We distinguish parties from factions (confed- 
erations for either unfair or, at any rate, egotistic 
ends, that frequently border on the form of con- 
spiracy) as being such combinations as desire a defi- 
nite form of change in the life of the state, of which 
they are persuaded that the general welfare of the 
whole stands in need, or will be secured by means 
of it. 

Every party, therefore, must possess a definite and 
well recognized program. Its organization can be 
based on nothing else than on the free concord of its 
constituent members ; and it is only a useful and 
comprehensible tactics, but not an obligatory duty 
on its part, to sacrifice convictions upon insignificant 
points to the purpose of carrying out the essential 
aims of the party. Its coherence as a party at all, 



NEED OF POLITICAL PARTIES. 1 35 

and a certain measure of discipline, is however to be 
preferred to the bare uniformity in conviction of dis- 
connected individuals ; since this latter of itself does 
not reach the point of undertaking the execution of 
anything, or perhaps is hurried away without prep- 
aration into such an undertaking. 

Since such parties are in general possible only 
among a people whose influence upon the life of 
the state is permitted as a matter of principle, 
they are also under the obligation, in case their views 
triumph in a legal way, of taking the control of 
affairs into their own hands. On the contrary, 
a continuous opposition toward the government, 
irrespective of what the direction of the latter is, 
is just as senseless as it is wanton ; but the senti- 
ment, that " the government itself must stand above 
the parties," is an unprofitable way of speaking ; 
the rather is it obvious that the government must 
always rely for support on the victorious party, or 
must entrust the administration to it for testing 
the practicability of its views. 

It would for the rest be impossible to distinguish 
certain parties which must exist in all state life. 
One reason for their formation exists only where 
there is a deficiency which they help to remedy, or 
a greater good which they wish to attain. Without 
such inducement no state naturally needs parties. 



I36 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

It is further comprehensible on psychological 
grounds, that there will always be a distinction of 
conservatives from those pressing for advance. But 
as long as the objects are not defined which it is 
proposed to retain or to require, this is really 
nothing but a distinction of temperament ; and it 
is an evil for it to be held a matter of political 
significance, and therefore believed to be of service 
to the state, either in the maintenance of every 
existing institution or in its aimless negation. 

A more formal distinction, which concerns the 
manner of the treatment of state problems, is that 
between the doctrinaire and the politician. The first 
lives on the error of treating the state as a scien- 
tific problem, in which above all consistency in the 
subordination of all particulars under one thorough- 
going ' principle ' is to be striven after. The others 
rightly recognize that in such a changeable process 
as is the life of different peoples, the question 
can never be anything but a matter of measures 
momentarily fitting, — of attaining those ends of 
public welfare, which in general admit no doubt, 
each time under the definite conditions of the 
moment, and consequently without laying any 
claim to uninterrupted consistency in the measures 
of administration. 



THE TWO ASSEMBLIES. 1 37 

§ 73. The practical execution of such a partici- 
pation of the people in the life of the state always 
leads eventually, under modern relations, to oral 
discussion by their representatives. 

For larger civil wholes one assembly has been 
held to be insufficient, and the co-operation of two 
is required : the first of these is to form the con- 
servative or moderating force which represents the 
existing condition, the historical traditions and 
higher problems of the state, — in contrast to the 
second, which, moved principally by the evil con- 
ditions of the situation of the moment, impels to 
swift redress, and without the counterpoise of the 
first might be inclined to sacrifice the future, and 
even the political honor of the state, to its tem- 
porary prosperity. 

For this first house of representatives, it is not 
those that are actually most worthy who may be 
chosen, but only those whose external circumstances 
as a matter of common repute, justify their being 
entrusted with this conservative disposition. 

Accordingly large holders in land, which are most 
interested in the stability of existing relations, — 
the ' high nobility,' as a preferred social station, 
in which a people can never be quite deficient, so 
long as there is actually to be a many-sided, noble 
human cultivation, distinction of disposition, and 



I38 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

worth of social forms ; further representatives of 
the arts and sciences ; and, finally such of the large 
communities or principal cities as, by the peculiar 
stamp of their form of living, are of special influ- 
ence upon the prosperity and the political destinies 
of the whole ; — these have therefore been invariably 
designated as members of this house. And it is 
indeed allowable that the principle of inheritance 
should apply to these representatives, so far as this 
is compatible with the interests represented. 

§ 74. The second house of representatives would 
have its place in serving the sum-total of endeavors 
that arise from moment to moment in the state. 

If the question here were still one de lege ferenda, 
then we should be compelled to wish that no one, 
as a so-called 'citizen of the state/ should forth- 
with succeed in gaining a direct relation to the 
state and a title to co-operate in the conduct of 
its affairs, who should not previously belong to a 
definite vocation, to some station, or else to some 
restricted and well-recognized community. As a 
member of such community he might first begin to 
be reckoned as part of the state, and then afterwards 
be called to represent in the large whole the to 
him well-known interests of the smaller com- 
munity. In this manner we should have had some 



THE CONCEPTION OF REPRESENTATION. 1 39 

security that the entire organization of the branches 
of industry and vocation would have been repre- 
sented in general, and that by experts ; and, besides, 
it would have been possible to hope that general 
political questions, so far as they were weighty 
and palpable to the collective life, would have been 
treated with some harmony. Such arrangements have 
vanished without hope of their re-establishment. 
The new theory of abstract citizenship in the state 
admits, essentially, of nothing more than a repre- 
sentation of just the general political questions 
which the time calls forth. 

Now in itself considered this, too, is a correct 
thought, that the sum of individuals, quite apart 
from their vocation, ought to be represented. But, 
nevertheless, to carry it out is fraught with such 
practical difficulties, that this whole constitutional 
mechanism may in fact be regarded as the only 
expedient possible in our time, and yet as in itself 
by no means a venerable ideal. 

§ 75. If we apprehend theoretically the concep- 
tion of ' representation,' and likewise keep in view 
the purpose which it ought to fulfil politically, then 
it cannot amount simply to meaning in general 
that every will (however changeable) be represented ; 
but must with this include the degree of insight 



140 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

also, and the degree of the force of character 
with which such insight should be actualized by 
each. 

The direct absolute right of choice represents 
merely a number of wills, and this not completely. 
For if it belongs quite naturally to the conception of a 
' universal representation ' that minorities also should 
not be made ' dead in law/ then it would be theoret- 
ically necessary that every individual should have a 
choice of as many delegates as there are to be in all. 
He would then have the possibility of finding differ- 
ent representatives for his different interests ; since 
it is hardly likely that even a single one will accord 
with him altogether and in every respect. This is 
obviously impracticable ; not merely on account of 
the intricacy, but also on account of the impossibility 
of finding for all the individuals the requisite number 
of trustworthy persons in some good degree of har- 
mony with the rest. 

But now it comes to this, that, after corporate rep- 
resentation has once been admitted, local electoral 
districts have become necessary. It is a simple mat- 
ter for logical calculation, that the breaking up of a 
large number into a number of groups, each of which 
then makes its decision by the majority of the indi- 
viduals composing it, does not by any means surely 
lead to a correspondence of the result with the will 



FAILURES IN REPRESENTATION. I4I 

of the collective majority. It may rather be, even if 
the groups are of the same size, that the final conclu- 
sion, in the worst case, corresponds only to the fourth 
part of the total number. 

This result, in itself very possible, may moreover 
be still further facilitated by special arrangement of 
the electoral districts, and then by the influence of the 
agitations which are introduced by the ' candidatures ' 
that as a matter of fact have become unavoidable. 

Merely actual majorities therefore find, at least in 
reference to particular questions, no sure representa- 
tion : but still less do the oftentimes significant 
minorities ; and the effort after ' representation ' is 
transformed into a conflict of choice between parties 
which seek to exclude each other from representation. 
There is no doubt that this may be in particular 
cases of use for the political life of the whole people ; 
but it is surprisingly strange as the result of a theory 
which is directed precisely toward ' representation? 

All these evil conditions naturally (but taken all 
in all, in praxi scarcely to any great extent) concern 
even the indirect representation through deputies 
which are chosen by electors. 

In a quite special way, however, does the latter 
arrangement induce also the raising of the further 
question, as to how far a representative is bound by 
the will of his constituency. Theoretically considered 



142 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

he is so without doubt. Since, however, the will of 
those who chose him cannot be itself despatched, 
but must be represented by a living person who, on 
the one hand, does not offer himself as the mere 
annunciator of a foreign will, and, on the other hand, 
must have freedom to cast a vote according to the 
circumstances of the moment ; a measure of con- 
fidence which does not admit of being limited pre- 
cisely, is certainly necessary : but on the other side 
every such deputy is obviously under obligations to 
lay down his commission as soon as he sees himself 
to be in permanent contradiction with the will of his 
constituents. 

§ 76. The forms of parliamentary procedure are in 
some degree shaped to compensate for such deficien- 
cies. Under this head, in the first place, belongs 
the fact that every citizen is entitled, in reference to 
observed evil conditions that would otherwise not 
come up for cognition and treatment in the assem- 
bly, to address petitions to them, and to induce them, 
where it is necessary, to obtain from the government 
legal proposals to remedy the evil. 

Under the same head belongs also the custom of 
having matters of detail that belong together 
prepared by smaller commissions in which those 
specially expert can be combined. 



PARLIAMENTARY LOGIC. I43 

The remaining forms of procedure have their evil 
conditions. These chiefly consist, apart from the 
human frivolity and the endless babbling, in the 
difficulty of assisting — in a large assembly and in 
the case of very complicated questions — the will of 
individuals to its undisturbed expression. 

It is well known that a special ' parliamentary 
logic ' has been framed, which does not indeed solve 
the insoluble problem, how it is to be brought about 
that, in the case of projects which cross each other, 
and when in fact the adoption of one excludes the 
taking of a vote on the succeeding ones, every 
individual can, without concern for the consequences, 
vote for that which seems to him the best ; — and 
after the rejection of that, for the next best. But, 
on the contrary, this logic has taught the artifice 
of being able — in consideration of the uncertainty of 
individuals, concerning the opinions of others and 
concerning the issue of taking a vote — to arrange 
the order of questions in such a way that certain 
disagreeable opinions cannot gain any open expres- 
sion whatever. A very useful art is this oftentimes, 
no doubt ; but still the most surprising result of a 
theory which is directed straight toward the rep- 
resentation of opinions. 

Besides all this, a large assembly, when locally shut 
off by itself, even in a large city, easily loses the 



144 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

feeling of sympathy with the actual temper of the 
people. ' Doctrinaire ' party interests are formed, 
which are strengthened by being constantly re- 
echoed within the same circle ; and " I and my politi- 
cal friends " as the decisive electors step into the 
position of the constituency to be represented. 

In fine, that which may be theoretically inspiriting 
in the thought of a * representation of the people/ 
is in praxi subjected to such a large abatement that, 
as history shows, the destiny of the people is 
not secured against a selfish struggle of parties, 
even under such a constitution of the state. The 
custom of choosing the popular house for only a 
short time, furnishes some hope of the correction of 
past mistakes by better choices. But instability in 
the life of the state, and unproductive political 
agitation, are of themselves a misfortune. 

§ 77. The making of laws and the granting of 
taxes form the principal objects for framing public 
measures. 

To establish general laws as truths of right is an 
affair of science. The political problem of a repre- 
sentative assembly is — such truths being taken for 
granted — to designate those general maxims which 
are to be maintained in the shape of executive ordi- 
nances with reference to a definite question. 



CODIFICATION OF LAWS. I45 

We are therefore to guard ourselves against 
setting up highly generalized principles (for example, 
the favorite rights of men) in the fashion of the 
doctrinaire, as well as against specializing that 
which, within the sphere of valid maxims, must be 
differently arranged according to time and place, 
— a specializing that abounds in paragraphs and 
claims a universal validity. Most legislative assem- 
blies, however, have a great inclination for detailed 
systematizing. To be sure they do not formulate 
the laws themselves, but endeavor to gain by 
importunity concessions from the government ; they 
are not satisfied, however, unless they bring about 
this harmful completeness, and that very promptly. 

Coherent books of law are least of all adapted for 
such councils, since they are wont — alas ! after the 
composition of their first draught to remain withdrawn 
from discussion through the press, then suddenly 
to be laid before the assembly for hasty advice, and 
not seldom left loaded down by them with inner 
contradictions through their propositions to amend. 

The other matter — the granting of taxes, as well 
direct as indirect — also belongs historically to the 
most important rights of the people, and in fact in 
earlier times belonged to them, as the other party over 
against the prince ; while at present it is, strictly 
speaking, still the 'state* and therefore the people 



I46 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

itself in another form, which of itself raises the 
means for satisfying its own needs as a state. 
The only question, therefore, which can be raised 
is, whether the administration and expenditure of 
this means seems to be in the right hands. It may, 
therefore, be understood as a matter of course, that 
the demands of a ministry whose maxims of admin- 
istration are disapproved, will be denied even in 
relation to those parts of the undertakings planned 
by it which are not disapproved, if only to compel the 
government to entrust this part of its business into 
other hands. But to injure the carrying out of the 
economics of the state in general by withdrawing all 
the customary taxes, and thereby to produce greater 
evil than it is designed to avoid, is by no means 
justifiable. Without doubt the government has in 
such a case a better right to maintain the statics quo 
in existence even by force, as long as no agreement 
is arrived at concerning its further alteration. 

§ 78. In order that a resolution when framed may 
become law, the constitutional theory has required 
the accordance of both the representative bodies ; — 
with manifold modifications of procedure to bring it 
about, and always with the design of moderating 
excessive haste in the lower house by the conser- 
vative disposition of the upper house. 






THE RIGHTS OF SOVEREIGNTY. I47 

If both houses agree, then it remains as the part of 
the government, by its approval and the proclamation 
which it is to issue, to make the resolution into a 
law, or by contradiction of it to annul it provisionally. 
This right of 'veto/ which has been in history so 
much contested, can have no other significance than 
that of hindering a temporary opinion in the interest 
of an historical right, of traditional stability, and of 
the better understood welfare of the state. If this 
opinion persists, then it indeed scarcely needs 
conversion into a 'merely suspensory veto,' in order 
to give a legal form to that yielding of the govern- 
ment which must occur as a matter of fact. 

§ 79. Besides the aforesaid supreme right of giv- 
ing its sanction, few other uncontested rights are left 
to the government as ' rights of sovereignty ' : such 
are the representation of the state in foreign transac- 
tions and in embassages, although the products of 
the first, in part at least (for example, all treaties 
which concern trade, commerce, and business rela- 
tions) are claimed by the representative assemblies 
as subjects of their jurisdiction; further the right of 
declaring war and concluding peace, — a right which 
probably is not perfectly well kept in anybody's 
hands, but least of all should be entrusted to a rep- 
resentative assembly in the form in which they 



I48 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

actually exist. Where, however, complete agree- 
ment is actually arrived at in an entire nation, an 
opposite decision on the part of the government is 
practically so difficult of execution, that a contradic- 
tion between the two will seldom come to pass. 

A much more general and always operative right 
of sovereignty consists in the appointment of those 
in office, whose whole organization in the modern 
state is a sort of personal representation of the 
interior ordering of the state, and of its thought 
as independent of the momentary will of the people. 
This way of looking at the matter was wanting to 
antiquity in so far as, although (in Rome at least) 
the independent worth of the office was respected, 
the bearer of it was nevertheless commissioned 
immediately by the people. The most recent times 
have without doubt shared in the view rather too 
plentifully ; since the preference has been to con- 
sider even the most insignificant authorities, which 
only represent communal interests, as emanations of 
the power of the state. 

The real office-bearers of the state, however, are 
with right appointed by the government from the 
number of those who, by means of a fixed and legally 
prescribed preparation, have devoted themselves to 
definite branches of the service, and of whom it is 
to be expected that they will, with full knowledge 



THE GOVERNMENT OFFICES. I49 

and in an unpartisan way, represent only the 
demands of the laws and not special social interests. 
The danger of doing the latter is imminent where 
important offices are given over to a candidate not a 
member of the guild, as it were ; and who, besides his 
position as an officer of the government, has widely 
ramifying social interests of a still different kind. 

It is only for the highest offices of the state that 
the government lays hold of the requisite capacities 
where it can find them, without connecting their fit- 
ness with any other test than that of such authenti- 
cating as has already resulted in the practical life. 
But such — namely, the ministers of state — are also 
not obligated in the same sense as the other office- 
holders to adhere to a permanent order ; but they 
are the confidential persons with whom the govern- 
ment believes that it can at definite times satisfy 
both the constant necessities of the state and also 
the new demands of the time ; and whom it lets go 
as soon as changed circumstances render it no 
longer possible for the same persons to reconcile the 
"new demands with their convictions." The other 
functionaries remain merely acquainted in an intelli- 
gent way, with such a change as a matter of fact, 
— not untouched by the supreme conduct of state 
affairs, but having in trust the administration of their 
special province. 



I50 PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 

§ 80. If all the attempts at mediation alluded to 
above are in vain, and the conflict between govern- 
ment, representatives, and people continues, then 
the further vexed question is wont to be raised, 
whether in such a case ' a right of revolution ' exists 
or not. 

To this question the reply seems to be simply as 
follows : If the trouble has once been taken to estab- 
lish a system of forms of right within which human 
life is to go on, then it is inconsistent and perfectly 
superfluous afterward to add yet another form for 
the abolition of these conditions of right, as though 
it were equally legitimate with them. Where such 
an unadjusted dissension exists, as that we have 
alluded to, it is of course impossible to exhort the 
people to suffer on permanently, and yet quite super- 
fluous to adduce an additional right of revolution. 

t Right/ the rather, stops at this point, since no- 
body is willing to adhere to it ; and the historical 
course of affairs begins, — in the manner in which 
it is now impelled simply by psychological motives. 
Just as we do not inquire of a storm of wind, 
whether it has the ' right ' to blow, but blame or 
bless it according to its effects; so will revolutions 
simply happen, and be judged historically merely 
according to their good or bad results. 



INDEX. 



INDEX, 



Aristotle, his view of slavery, 80. 
Asceticism, to be shunned, 60 f. 



Benevolence, 29 ; excites unconditioned approbation, 32 f. ; the focal idea, 
53 ; Christian estimate of, 59. 



Causation, law of, 39 f., 45 ; infinite regressus in, 43 ; new beginnings in, 44. 

Character, individual, 31. 

Children, relation of parents to, 73 f., 75. 

Christianity, estimate of individual character, 59 f. 

Conduct, subject of, 10; distinguished from action, 23 f. ; never blind, 24; 

always free, 24 f. ; moral qualities of, 25 f. ; ethical forms of, 28 f. 
Conscience, function of, 10, 22 ; condemns egoism, 20. 
Conscientiousness, 28. 
Consistency, demanded in conduct, 30. 
Contracts, meaning of, 88; rights of, 88 f.; obligation of, 89 f.; limits 

of, 90 f. 



Democracy, conception of, 122 f . ; disadvantages of, 123 f. ; truth of, 124 f. 

Despotism, conception of, 128. 

Determinism, views of, 35 f., 45 f. ; compatibility of, with freedom, 45 f. ; 

and psychical mechanism, 47. 
Divorce, relation of society toward, 72 f. 
Dualism, unallowable, 45 f. 
Duties, of the individual, 65 ; social, 77 f. 



154 INDEX. 



Egoism, condemned by conscience, 20 ; of ancient culture, 59. 

Ethics, relations of, to practical philosophy, 2; sources of, 3f. ; Kant's 

view of, 13 f. ; Herbart's view of, 14 f. 
Eudsemonism, ethics of, 11 f. 

F. 

Fanaticism, nature of, 28. 

Feelings, the ethical, 16 f. 

Freedom, necessary to conduct, 24 f. ; of will, 35 f., 81 ; relation to necessity, 
38; to the law of causation, 39 f . ; includes determinism, 45 f. ; and 
psychical mechanism, 47 ; right of, 78 f. ; significance of, 81. 

G. 

Government, forms of, 122 f., 125 f. 

H. 

Herbart, his view of the ethical axioms, 14 f. ; and of conduct, 16 f. ; of 

justice, 29; of perfectness, 32; of moral action, 37 f. 
Holiness, 31. 

I. 

Ideals, the ethical, 23 f., 53. 

Individual, the duties of, 58 f., 62; relations of, to society, 105 f., 109. 

j- 

Justice, Herbart's view of, 29 ; care of, by the state, 129, 132 ; science of, 

130; valid per se, 131; courts of, 131. 
Jus Talionis, injustice of, 103. 

K. 

Kant, rigoristic views of, 13 f. ; formula for conduct, 13, 27 ; view of ##free- 
dom, 39 ; of marriage, 68 f. 

L. 
Labor, division of, 63 ; 107 f. 
Laws, in a Democracy, 123 f . ; the making of, 144 f., 146; codification 

of, 146. 
Liberty, right to restrict, 103 f. 
Life, the ascetic, 60 ; the reflective, 60 f. ; the active, 62 f. 



INDEX. 155 

M. 

Magistracy, conception of, 122. 

Man, as an end to himself, 68. 

Marriage, natural basis of, 67 f. ; example of animals, 67 f. ; ideal of, 68 ; as 

a contract, 69 ; partners in, 69 f. ; recognized by society, 70 f. ; between 

relatives, 71 f. 
Monarch, prerogatives of, 127 f. 
Monarchy, nature of, 125 f. 
Motives, comparison of, 40 f. ; preponderance of, 41^,47; relation of, to 

will, 47 . 

N. 
Nature, following of, as ethical, 55 f., 67 f. ; state of, a dream, 108. 



P. 

Parties, origin of, 132 f. ; distinguished from factions, 134; tactics of, 134 f. ; 
reasons for, 136 f. 

Person, the individual, 58; difference in ancient and Christian culture, 
58 f. ; freedom necessary to, 79. 

Personality, necessary to conduct, 30. 

Pleasure, principle of Eudasmonism, 11 f., 21 f.; relation of, to ethical prin- 
ciples, 18, 33 f. ; never absolute, 19 f. 

Practical Philosophy, problems of, 1 f., 56 f. ; scope of, 2 ; as a science, 
15 f. ; method of, 54 f. 

Property, rights of, 81 f. ; inheritance of, 83 f. 

Punishment, right of, 96 f., 99, 104; nature of, 97, 99; origin of, 99; object 
of, 100 f. ; kinds of, 103 f. ; of death, 104. 



R. 

Representation, conception of, 137, 139 f.; houses of, 137 f. ; minorities in, 

140 f. ; corporate, 140 f. ; defeat of, 143 f. 
Resignation, 27. 

Retribution, demanded by conscience, 29 f. 
Revolution, the right of, 150. 
Rights, not possessed toward nature, 63 f. ; natural, 64 f. ; origin of the idea 

of, 76 f . ; of property, 81 f . ; of intercourse in truth, 86 f . ; of contracts, 

88 f . ; of punishment, 96 f . ; limitations of, inf.; science of, 130; of 

sovereignty, 147 f. ; of revolution, 150. 
Rigorism, of Kant, 13 f. 
Rome, laws of, 130 f., 148. 



I56 INDEX. 



S. 

Sensibility, necessary to conduct, 25 f. ; particulars of, 26. 

Slavery, violates human rights, 80 ; Aristotle's view of, 80 f. ; the modern, 81. 

Socialism, nature of, 113; plans of, 113 f . ; practice of, 16; dangers of, 

116 f. ; fallacy of, 118 f. 
Society, necessary to rights, 64 f. ; relation of, to marriage, 70 f. ; to freedom 

of the individual, 79, 95 f., 105; conception of, 92 f., 94, 121; right of, 

to punish, 99 f., 103 f. ; tasks of, 106 f., no f. 
State, authority of, 119, 126; conception of, 120 f . ; as related to society, 

122; false analogies for, 125; parties in, 132; constitution of, 134; 

officers of, 148. 
Statistics, relation of, to question of freedom, 40 f. 
Suicide, morals of, 65 f. 



T. 

Trades Unions, nof., 116 f.; advantages of, no; abuses of, nof. 
Truth, duty of uttering, 85 f. ; right to demand, 85 f. ; how far inviolable, 
86 f. ; educator's use of, 87. 



Veto, government right of, 148. 



W. 



Will, freedom of, 35 f., 40 f. ; statistics of, 40 f. ; cannot be blind, 46 ; weak- 
ness of, blameworthy, 48 f. ; implies effective intensity, 49 f. ; relation to 
right of property, 82 f. 



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